The bee was Napoleon Bonaparte's favourite
insect |
Bees
reared in cities are healthier and more productive than their
country cousins, a study by French beekeepers' association Unaf has
found.
Urban bees enjoy higher temperatures and a wider variety of plant
life for pollination, while avoiding ill-effects of pesticides, the
study said.
At the same time they can filter out city pollution such as
exhaust fumes.
The study prompted Unaf to start a campaign promoting beekeeping
in urban parks, on balconies and on roofs.
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I would find great carpets of sick bees, all trembling

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Beekeepers say urban bees' productivity can be up to four times
that of their rural counterparts.
"In town, the bees go out more," apiarist Jean Paucton told AFP
news agency.
Disorientation
Another beekeeper said urban hives had maintained a steady
mortality rate while in the countryside many bees were dying.
"I would find great carpets of sick bees, all trembling," Loic
Leray said.
The Union of French Apiarists (Unaf) is campaigning against
pesticides, which it says are destroying the industry.
It has expressed particular concern about Gaucho and Regent, two
banned chemicals, the effects of which are still felt in rural
areas.
"These molecules are neurotoxins which disorientate the bee and
make it impossible for it to find the hive again," Unaf president
Henri Clement told AFP.
But others have blamed diversification for the decline, saying
attempts by beekeepers to increase production by importing unadapted
foreign varieties of bee have backfired.
Correspondents say bees have a special place in French history -
they were so admired by the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte that he made
the insect a symbol of his reign.