World’s most livable city - for bees
The City of Sails might soon be known as the city of bees.
An Auckland Council-funded campaign called ‘for the love of bees’ aims to turn Auckland into the world’s safest city for bees.
This month the campaign will introduce a bee colony of 5000 bees to Auckland’s Victoria Park, which will stay for the next two years.
Auckland Council is contributing $100,000 over two years to the initiative.
Free bee keeping lessons and green pathways to promote bee travel across the city are some of the campaign’s initiatives to bring more bees into urban Auckland.
In 2016 a United Nations biodiversity group found bee species were declining by up to 40 per cent in Northwest Europe and North America due to habitat loss, pesticides, pollution, invasive species and climate change.
In Victoria Park beekeeping schools will be held monthly for the next two years to educate people on how to raise bees.
Parks and reserves are being connected by targeted planting in areas between parks to create ‘pollination pathways’ with the first connection completed in Grey Lynn.
New Zealand’s bee hive numbers have risen from 295,000 in 2005 to 650,000 in February 2016, however populations had declined due to the varroa parasite.