One of the BeeGuards mating stations is placed in the Botanical Garden of Bologna. A very exciting place in regard to mating honey bee queens. The city center offers an extremely low commercial honey bee density and was thus found suitable for controlled mating necessary to implement the work program of WP2.
The Botanical Garden and Herbarium of the University of Bologna are open to the public and regularly host school children as well as university students.
And being in a public place, it is important to be open minded and share your project and knowledge. Visitors are curious and want to know what is going on in the garden.
Therefore, very nice information posters have been produced. Here presented by Cecilia Costa, BeeGuards coordinator, standing proudly next to the overview poster.
Another poster explains the honey bee mating biology and the importance of the bee queen.
On one of our pictures, you can see the mating nucs, where the virgin queens are hosted and mated.
Our project has public awareness, and already the first interview with the Botanical Garden’s Professor Marta Galloni has taken place.
We have a very nice setup in the heart of Bologna with access to the public. Nice job by CREA and BeeSources.
