Bricks for solitary bees
Cities pose challenges for both humans and biodiversity. We need a sustainable balance that preserves the essence of the city and respects nature.
The lack of suitable habitats, such as nooks in modern buildings and sufficient green areas, hinders the presence of essential pollinators like solitary bees, which are fundamental for the ecosystem and local food production.
We want large green areas to enjoy and fresh local food, or even a garden at home or on the rooftop. To achieve all this, we need pollinators… Is there a solution?
This is where the English company Green & Blue and the BEE BRICKS project come in. The bricks manufactured to provide a home for solitary bees without losing sight of architectural aesthetics.
BEE BRICKS: bricks designed to offer mini homes to solitary bees
The BEE BRICK is an architectural brick with standard measurements that has multiple holes of different sizes offering a mini home for solitary bees.
Remembering that solitary bees do not have a queen or honey to protect, which means they are less aggressive, as long as you don’t bother them, of course.
The goal of this type of brick is to be used in buildings or any construction near a green area without losing; neither the construction quality nor the aesthetics, but helping these small pollinators.
If we visit the Green & Blue website, they actually have different proposals to help bees, among other interesting projects to integrate biodiversity into the city. Bricks, planters, posts, and other constructive objects that form a quite interesting and unconventional collection.
In fact, an urban planning law was approved in the city of Brighton and Hove (England) that requires new buildings to include multipurpose bricks that provide shelter, both for solitary bees and bird nesting boxes.
Although at first glance, this new law approved in England may seem like an important step. There is debate within the scientific community as reported in The Guardian.
The debate focuses on whether they can really provide a tangible benefit to biodiversity or not, and if they could become an element to attract mites or promote the spread of diseases.
In the absence of more scientific studies, as Dave Goulson comments in The Guardian, a biology professor at the University of Sussex…“Possibly the holes are not deep enough to be ideal homes for bees, but they are probably better than nothing”.
Obviously, this is not the only initiative to create more bee-friendly cities. We already reported in another article that the Netherlands turned the roofs of 316 bus stops into bee shelters, amazing!
Or that you can even have bees inside your home with a modular system designed for this purpose, to enjoy them without being bothered.
Initiatives that add value like the Bees in the City project. A mapping of urban hives at an international level and much more. A project that seeks to expand the original audience of beekeeping in the urban core. To provide knowledge and try to educate in this field to everyone, from young to old.
As a note and as reported by the Bees in the City website. In Spain, it is established by law that hives must be placed at least 400 meters from urban centers and population centers, 200 meters from national roads, 100 meters from inhabited rural homes and other livestock facilities, 50 meters from regional roads, and 25 meters from local paths.
In any case, there are autonomous communities that allow municipalities to grant permits and establish the minimum distance of the hives, always in a very controlled and limited way. These cases are still very rare. Maybe… Do we need to start changing our mindset, don’t we?
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