As part of his doctoral research, Hans Kalliwoda initiated and organised a symposium entitled ‘The Inner City as Nature Reserve’. This avant-garde and visionary symposium brought together academics and experts from various disciplines. Surprisingly, and scientifically proven, urban environments turn out to be more favourable to bees than rural areas. This counter-intuitive fact can be attributed to the fact that urban areas offer a refuge for bees amid challenges such as polluted water, pesticide use, monocultures and habitat destruction.
Bees, once abundant in the countryside, are forced by these unfavourable conditions to seek refuge in cities. In 2014 this subject was addressed holistically at the BeeCare symposium ‘The Inner City as Nature Reserve’. An interdisciplinary team of ecologists, sociologists and policy experts took on the challenge of saving the various wild bee species from extinction. The key conclusion was to see these bees as refugees in need of food and shelter – a concept called RefuBee. This change of perspective is crucial for their conservation.
Photo: with Jolanda Maas (VU), Tetje Falentijn (Landschap Noordholland), Jeroen v.d. Sluijs (Utrecht University) and Johnas v. Lammeren PvdD (Party for the Animals)
From reading to planting.
Find the bee that belongs to your neighbourhood, and plant her flowers.