The Bee Sanctuary is a place where unwanted bees are adopted and given new homes. We take any bees in the Gauteng area and rehabilitate the bee colony into a strong, functional bee hive so that they can be relocated to farmers to do pollination work. We will take any bees at no charge, for free, and rehabilitate them on our farm in the South of Johannesburg. Think of us as the SPCA for honey bees (the SPCA do not deal with insects). Note that for the free service you must bring the bees to us. If we have to collect the bees then we must charge for transport as we have to pay for petrol, a bakkie and a bee keeper to collect the bees. Or you can arrange for a bee keeper to take your bees to us. Some bee keepers will do this as a favour but most will charge you.
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The Johannesburg Bee Sanctuary founders recognised that far too many bees were being poisoned in Johannesburg. The reason that they were poisoned is because the bees were considered a pest and there was nowhere that the bees could be transferred to. For this reason we established a safe haven for bees- any bees can be brought to us at no fee to encourage people to bring us their bees.
Many people call exterminators to poison bees in residential houses. This is a serious health concern for the occupants of the house because no poison has been approved for use on bees in residential areas in South Africa. Basically, there is no human safe poison for bees. If the poison kills the bees in a house, then it is probably going to cause health concerns for the occupants of the house as well.
This is not a great concern for bees that are located in an industrial setting such as a mine as the poison does not have continuous contact with specific individuals. In a residential setting it is likely that the bees are in the roof or in the wall cavity so the poison must be applied in the roof or the roof cavity. This is a serious health concern as the occupants of a house will have close and long term exposure to the poison.
The concentration of the poison is another concern to humans. An aerosol can of Insect Killer will kill about 500 bees. A typical hive will have 20 000 to 50 000 bees, so to kill a hive a minimum of 40 cans of poison must be used. That concentration of poison is harmful to humans. Imagine spraying 40 cans of Insect Killer in your bedroom.
The easy test to see if a poison is harmful to humans is to ask the person applying the poison to consume some of the poison. If they refuse, then the poison is harmful to humans. Every pest control technician will tell you that their poison has no harmful effect on humans but we are yet to find a technician willing to taste their own poison!
We have been called hippies and bunny huggers and that is just fine. The fact of the matter is that bees play a vital role in our lives, without bees we would not have fruit and vegetables. There are a lot of pressure groups that focus on CO2 emissions and global warming (which is a worthwhile cause in itself) but there are far too few pressure groups focusing on the pollinators which allow us to eat every day. We would like to start the trend of saving bees and that is why we have the Johannesburg Bee Sanctuary.
Hawaiian yellow-faced bees are no different, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has now moved to protect the insects by placing seven species on the endangered list, a first for any type of bee in the US. In 2009, the society first submitted petitions to the USFWS pushing for the protection of seven species of the genus Hylaeus, which are native to Hawaii and are threatened by habitat loss due to land development, the introduction of non-native plant and animal species, and climate change.
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