Bee keeping buzz at a Dubai community
dubai — Local residents in Dubai are helping to maintain bee populations by raising colonies in their own backyards.
Residents of The Sustainable City (TSC) have turned beekeepers and aim to turn their community into a bee-friendly development by practising “mindful landscaping” that will attract more bees to the area.
Along with the Beekeepers Association (a non-profit organisation), residents have helped relocate five wild swarms within the community. And now with its very own Bee Garden housing over 100,000 honeybees, the TSC is on track to becoming the city’s bee hub.
“Usually when you urbanise an area, it disrupts nature and we are very conscious about that. Repopulating the community with bees is good for the landscape and good for the bee population as a whole,” Karim El Jisr, executive director of TSC, told Khaleej Times.
100K Number of honeybees at TSC’s Bee Garden
dubai — Residents of The Sustainable City (TSC) in Dubai have turned their hand to beekeeping and in the space of just six months, have helped relocate five wild swarms, which would otherwise have been destroyed.
Now with its very own Bee Garden, the community has become home to about 100,000 honey bees. With the aim of becoming a bee hub, TSC residents are working hand-in-hand with experts from the Beekeepers Association (a non-profit organisation) to practice mindful landscaping to attract more bees to the area.
As pollinators, bees play an integral part in every aspect of the ecosystem, so by choosing to live side by side with them, the 2,000 residents of TSC are reaffirming their commitment to sustainability practice.
“Usually, when you urbanise an area, it disrupts nature. We are very conscious about that. Re-populating the community with bees is good for the landscape and good for the bee population as a whole,” Karim El Jisr, executive director of TSC, told Khaleej Times.
The idea to host its very own Bee Garden came when several residents started to notice wild beehives popping up in places like balconies and windowsills.
“When we started to see the wild swarms come up here it was a beautiful sign. It’s an indication that it’s a healthy ecosystem. But we couldn’t leave them in these places.”
That’s when the Beekeepers Association stepped in to help train members of the community to relocate the wild swarms inside and outside the development.
Since then, Zahira Nedjraoui, co-founder of the association, has introduced eight beehives into TSC’s Bee Garden, each of which houses about 35,000 bees.
Speaking to Khaleej Times from the garden, Nedjraoui said due to the “loss of natural habitats as a result of urbanisation”, swarms often end up in residents’ garages and gardens.
“Unfortunately, the knee jerk reaction by residents is to call pest control or the municipality to destroy it. Our association offers an ethical alternative where we rescue and safely relocate the swarms, at no cost.”
But as a volunteer-based association, Nedjraoui said they struggle to keep up with demand. Because of that, the next logical step is to educate the community on the importance of preserving bees and their hives, starting with the residents of TSC.
Through its bee preservation programme, it is teaching residents to nurture the bee swarms and practice mindful landscaping.
With bees and many flowering plants needing one another to survive, planting bee flowers like sweetclover, alfalfa and thistle can help repopulate the honey bee community in an urbanised area.
“We are teaching residents to modify the landscape by practising less intrusive gardening. We advise against the use of toxic chemicals and pesticides too,” she said.
With five wild swarms successfully relocated by the association with the help of residents, El Jisr said TSC may be one of the few communities here where you see weeds growing.
“We don’t use chemicals, pesticides, that’s why you see weeds. We say no to the toxic stuff. We will continue to edit our farmland. We won’t cut back the hedges as much and we’ll embrace the weeds if that means the bees can thrive.”
Taking the sting out of fear
With many young families living within the development, El Jisr said there were a lot of questions raised when the idea of reintroducing bees into the community was first raised. But through training and education from Nedjraoui and her team, those fears were quickly dispelled.
“Will bees attack? That’s one of the most frequent questions we get,” Nedjraoui said. “Bees will never attack spontaneously, only when they feel threatened. Don’t poke them, don’t purposely get in their way when they are foraging, and avoid swatting them and you will be fine. We say it’s all about managing your fear and that’s all through education.”
With the association’s approach to beekeeping centred around “sustainable practice”, Nedjraoui said as they are still in their first year of the programme, they will not be harvesting any honey as it acts as the bees food source.
“Next year when we have strong hives we might be able to harvest some honey, but really, mass amounts will not be produced. Strengthening the hive and repopulating the bees with the help of residents is our main focus.”