World Bee Day: A day in the life of a beekeeper
By Francesca Merlo
“If the bees are happy, it means the climate is happy”. It’s an important statement to make on World Bee Day, and it’s an important statement to make amid a global climate crisis. But this is not just Andrea Amendola, six years a beekeeper, being biased: it is a fact.
Bees are essential, amongst other things, for pollination, wildlife, and general biodiversity. They are true champions in taking care of our common home.
They have their collaboration with nature down to a T. Andrea explains that bees take from flowers without harming them, they create their perfectly symmetrical houses out of wax and are genetically effective in their reproduction. No bee attacks you unless it feels threatened. They give and take from the environment equally. “Man has a lot to learn from these creatures”, says Andrea.
They have behavioural traits, “and you can definitely tell when they feel disturbed”, he warns, before opening one of his colourful alvearies. This queen-less family buzzes around, restless, and is in fact disturbed. The family next door, which does have a queen, is much more welcoming, and Andrea takes out one of the frames to show us the wax bees hard at work building their new wax homes. You can really see where Rimsky-Korsakov got his inspiration from here.
Andrea has bees spread around the Roman countryside, and only with his 4x4 and his knowledge of the roads can he cross the overgrown flora into the open land where the beehives are. “Some people go to the office every day, but these are my various offices”, he says, quite proudly. Despite Italy’s beauty, it doesn’t look like Italy at all. The rain, which brings out the various smells of earth and flowers, almost makes it feel as if we have entered the Panamanian jungle. That’s precisely how Andrea chooses his “offices”. His honey brings together the pollens of all the different flowers: wildflower honey. That’s one of the reasons why the bees are so important. They pollinate, reaching areas where other pollinators cannot.
Communication in the beekeeping industry goes well beyond words. It reaches a level of communication and comprehension far from the frenzy of human city life.
But beekeeping is a lonely job, and Andrea’s only colleagues are the bees themselves. “I talk to them”, he says, to the bees, the birds, the snakes… He asks them how they are, and if they can, please, "give me a hand today".
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