At the end of National Pollinator Week, here's how to treat our buzzing, stinging friends

Float like pollen, sting like a bee.

Sunday concluded National Pollinators Week, an annual celebration that spreads the gospel about protecting and appreciating pollinators. According to the city of Albuquerque website, New Mexico is home to more than 2,000 pollinator species, which include over 1,400 types of bees.

More than 85% of flowering plants and trees need pollinators to survive, and 70% of the food we eat is due to the work of pollinator species.

John Thomson, of Altura Honey Bees, said that he and co-owner Luke Murphy started the company as a way to do their part in protecting the pollinators in the community.

“I personally noticed their benefit to my surroundings in my neighborhood in the North Valley, and I’ve seen it just kind of transform an orchard or a space when there’s pollinators active in that community,” Thomson said.

Altura Honey Bees is a nonprofit, donations-based beehive removal service in Albuquerque that rescues unwanted hives and properly rehomes them.

“We do collect some donations, but generally the people that are calling us, it’s because of economic circumstances,” Thomson said. “The closest service to us charges a base rate of $350, so it’s generally not economically feasible for most people to have the bees humanely removed and relocated, and they will oftentimes end up opting for the $10 can of pesticide that you can purchase at whatever hardware store,” he said.

All Altura bee removals start with an initial call, when the company can get a better understanding of the beehive.

“The biggest initial questions we like to ask are where the beehive is located, what their activity is like and how long they’ve been there,” Murphy said.

The goal is to come up with an action plan while doing as little damage as possible to the beehive or the home.

After the evaluation, Altura will come back equipped with tools that can help with the removal. The company uses items like cutting wheels, thermal cameras and a bee-sucking vacuum to safely remove the hive and keep all the bees together.

Thomson says bees, specifically honey bees, are essential to an ecosystem trying to survive damage done by humans.

“Some kinds of pollinator purists out there have a little bit of a misunderstanding, and they think that honey bees are out competing with native bees,” Thomson said. “The sad truth of the matter is that there would not be enough pollination going on in the absence of the honey bee.”

Native bees in New Mexico do not have as much offspring as honey bees and are mostly solitary and sedentary. While they do pollinate, native bees mostly stay in one area.

However, colonies often host over 60,000 honey bees at one time and move more frequently than native bees.

“So you combine those two things and you just have this like massive force for pollination in the ecosystem that just can’t be rivaled,” Thomson said.

Albuquerque was established as a Bee City in 2016 after councilors initiated the process with the support of the local beekeeper community. Albuquerque was the first city in the Southwest to do so.

As part of becoming a Bee City, Albuquerque vowed to make the environment safe and hospitable to bees. One of those commitments is making it illegal for pest controllers to spray bees or bee hives with harsh chemicals. Instead, they are prompted to reach out to local beekeepers to safely relocate them.