On March 1st, we begun our current project to raise awareness and promote natural beekeeping as a cooperating agent in ecological restoration models: ART FOR CHANGE, within the framework of the European Project There is no PLANET B! run in Spain by the Andalusian Fund of Municipalities for International Solidarity (FAMSI) and financed by the European Union through the DEAR Programme.
The honey bee serves as a precious example in understanding how collaboration and interdependence in ecosystems work: The colony demonstrates intimate and deep interrelationships, in which no one member could survive without the rest, or without the pollen and nectar gathered from the fields. The bee is also an example of how, through the historical story of its domestication, the exploitation of natural resources lead to an imbalance so great that it is imperative to take immediate practical measures to bring attention to the interdependence between species and climatic agents.
Bee Time´s work is steeped in the recovery of local ways of living in the area of the Janda, raising the possibility of creating systems of co-evolutionary relationship with the environment.This season, we are proposing a program of actions that invite and enable a sensitive relationship with the ecosystem, and taking an active part in it. One of the activities developed in this program, is the creation of a melliferous garden in the area surrounding the Water Mills of Santa Lucía, in the vicinity of the apiaries of Apijanda Learning Community. We have received seedlings of melliferous trees and shrubs, through a program for the recovery of the Mediterranean landscape of the Junta de Andalucía, A tree, A landscape of the future. With hands to the ground, and the wish to work together, a group of local inhabitants came together to clear the overgrowth of Morning Glory and plant the seedlings.
We know that part of the difficulties the local honeybee colonies are experiencing is the diminishing diversity of pesticide free, nectar flow in the landscape. It is our wish, with this ongoing planting campaign, that we will be able to provide year round flowering abundance in this area that hosts long dry summers. On Saturday we began to notice how these actions also serve to bring us together as a community, and reveal a soul need for this work.
