MEXICO CITY (AP) 鈥 "Knife,鈥 Adriana Vel铆z says with the concentration of a brain surgeon.
Shrouded in a white bee suit, she lies stretched out on the ground in one of Mexico City鈥檚 most buzzing districts. Taking the knife, she pries open the side of a light post and flashes a glowing red lantern on a humming bee hive.
Vel铆z is on a mission to save the approximately 20,000 bees inside.
She heads a group of mostly women who are working hive by hive to relocate bees that would be exterminated if they remained in Mexico鈥檚 crowded capital city.
The group, Abeja Negra SOS, was born in 2018 when Vel铆z 鈥 a veterinarian working for the city government at the time 鈥 noticed that when authorities received calls about beehives, the automatic response was to exterminate the bees.
She and other colleagues began looking for an alternative.
鈥淲e do these rescues because it鈥檚 a species that鈥檚 in danger of extinction,鈥 said Vel铆z, who works for Abeja Negra SOS. 鈥淲e鈥檙e an alternative so that the emergency teams don鈥檛 exterminate them. We give them a second chance.鈥
Globally, bee populations have been decimated in recent decades. The United States alone is estimated to have lost around 25% of its bees in the past 40 years. Earlier this year, beekeepers in southern Mexico of millions of bees by pesticides.
The drop is often blamed on human causes: the , destruction of natural habitats and climate change. Scientists and world leaders warn that bee population decline could have a wide range of detrimental ripple effects.
In 2019, the that bee loss 鈥減oses a serious threat鈥 to global food security. Others like Adriana Correa Ben铆tez, a professor researching bees at 香港六合彩挂牌资料 Autonomous University of Mexico, said loss of bees could make it more difficult for Mexico to mitigate climate change.
鈥淭hey don鈥檛 just pollinate what we eat,鈥 she said. 鈥淭hey also pollinate native plants that regulate the entire ecosystem. And now, with climate change, reforestation is so important and (bee pollination) really influences that.鈥
Over the past five years, the group has traveled across the sprawling city of 9 million, saving bee colonies from trees, street gutters and lamp posts. They have relocated around 510 hives, with an average size of about 80,000 bees.
Late on a recent Thursday night, Vel铆z peers into the hive the size of a small melon lodged inside the street lamp.
She gently slices a knife along the side of the hive, letting out a gentle 鈥渟hhh,鈥 as if calming a child. Knife dripping with honey, she pulls the honeycomb out and places it in a wooden square frame, which she slides into a wooden box.
Tonight, they are lucky, she says. This is a small colony and it's calm, Vel铆z explains, referring to the hive as 鈥渉ippie bees.鈥
As they go, they search for the queen, a key element to rehabilitating the bees and assuring the colony gets relocated smoothly.
鈥淵ou hear that? That means we have the queen," she says, tilting her hear toward the box where the bees' chaotic buzz turns into a purr.
Because many of the bees in Mexico come from African roots, they can be more aggressive than the average honeybee. This can create problems in big cities, where residents often associate the insects more with danger than their environmental importance.
Vel铆z said the group's dozen or so bee handlers are mostly women.
鈥淲e tried to work with men, but they seem to love the danger,鈥 Vel铆z said. 鈥淲e began to see that it wasn鈥檛 very viable, so we began to contract just women. We realized that we can do the exact same as them, and often even do it better.鈥
Once a hive is safely stored inside the box, the group takes the bees to the rural outskirts of the city, where they can recover and grow strong. They later donate the bees to local bee farmers or release them into the wild.
The team has run into hurdles because they charge a bit more than $300 for removing a hive, mainly to cover logistical costs. For many in the city, it's still easier to call firefighters to exterminate bees for free.
Yet, as the project has grown, Abeja Negra SOS has also generated a buzz, inspiring other groups to emerge and start doing the same work.
鈥淲ith what we do, we may not be changing the world, but we鈥檙e at least changing the situation in our city,鈥 Vel铆z said.
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Associated Press journalist Fernanda Pesce contributed to this report.
