Beekeeper Samuel Ramal has been suffering from arm pain for days.
He has the so-called tennis elbow.
This 47-year-old producer from the Barcelona municipality of Polinyà did not get tendinitis from practicing racket sport.
The fault lies with an insect: the velutina, the Asian wasp, an invasive species that threatens the sector due to its cannibalistic voracity.
"I don't know what else to do," says Ramal as he unleashes a one-handed backhand with a homemade butterfly net to kill a specimen.
It is the weapon that he has made in a desperate attempt to save the 50 hives from him.
An invasive wasp tries to capture a bee that is heading for its hive in a production by Polinyà (Barcelona)Gianluca Battista
In February 2018, this newspaper interviewed Ramal in the small production that he built a decade ago on the outskirts of the Barcelona municipality.
“I start to detect the Asian hornet.
The other day I detected a dozen that were prowling near my hives.
I hope they don't go any further," Ramal said then.
The worst omens of him have come true four years later.
His small production, in which he provides therapeutic services with what the bees produce, is already a hornet's nest.
Thousands of Asian wasps, which feed on honey bees, surround their hive boxes waiting for the bees to come out to pollinate to eat them.
The history of Ramal during these four years exemplifies the unstoppable expansion of the insect throughout the Peninsula.
The beekeeper has made homemade traps with plastic bottles with water and honey to attract the insect and catch it.
He places them in front of each hive and within hours the traps are filled with hundreds of wasps.
They serve to stop the bleeding, but they do not suture the wound: the buzzing of the wasps does not stop.
He also kills them one by one.
But as soon as one falls, in a matter of seconds another one arrives to fill its gap.
In each Asian hornet nest there can be more than 2,000 individuals.
And Ramal believes that there may be several in the forest that surrounds his plot.
One of the traps, full of wasps.Gianluca Battista
The same situation has been experienced for years by the beekeepers of Girona after the velutina managed to cross the Pyrenees in 2010 after its arrival in France, it is believed, through a freighter from China.
The species spread rapidly, also in the Basque Country, Navarra and Galicia.
And it started to go down, like the dreaded white walkers from the hit series
Game of Thrones
, to the south, driven by temperature changes brought about by climate change.
Franc López, president of the Barcelona Beekeepers Association, which brings together 130 members, most of them non-professionals, defines the situation as “very difficult”.
The velutina has firmly established itself in the Barcelona province and is now heading to the Ebro delta (Tarragona), where some of the most important productions in Spain are concentrated, such as Mel Muria, in El Perelló, known as the "village of the honey".
Tarragona is the province with the highest production: it concentrates 40% of hives in Catalonia, according to data from the Generalitat.
The bees, hearing the buzzing of the invasive species nearby, decide not to go outside.
They stop pollinating and eventually die of starvation.
"Under normal conditions, at this time of year we could no longer be here without a protective suit," says Ramal.
The bees that decide to go out do so slowly and run the risk of being captured by the wasp, which measures about three centimeters and rises into the air like a tiny drone.
With its static flight, it stands firm against hives.
He stares at them, waiting for a bee to come out.
Sometimes, he takes advantage of the hive's weakness to try to get inside and capture them directly.
To avoid this, the bees accumulate at the entrance to block it, forming a wall with their bodies to prevent their passage,
Dozens of bees gather in front of their hive to protect it from the Asian hornet.
Gianluca Battista (THE COUNTRY)
“I am on guard duty all day.
I spend the whole day in front of the boxes killing as many as I can.
This is war,” says Ramal.
In just over 30 minutes he manages to kill twenty with his homemade butterfly net.
The moments in which he manages to clear the surroundings of a hive, the bees take the opportunity to rush out to the fields.
At this time of year, the bees find the ideal conditions to feed and store strength for winter, when low temperatures force them to take refuge.
“It is as if the winter had come early and they still had another one to go through.
When the real one comes, they will no longer have the strength to fight it.
Call me in a few months and I'll tell you how many we've lost,” she says.
For now, she has already invested 1,000 euros to deal with the onslaught with material to implement prevention systems.
Beekeepers in the area have formed a WhatsApp group to share combat techniques against the invader.
They also receive advice from the beekeepers of Girona, already experienced in this war.
Beekeeper Samuel Ramal working on hive boxes to try to protect them. Gianluca Battista
A Ramal, beyond a reduction in honey production, is concerned about the situation of non-professional beekeepers, key to maintaining pollination in certain areas.
"It's not just business, we're going to lose biodiversity," he says.
Recreational beekeepers are most at risk because they have neither the time nor the means to combat expansion.
“I'll see if I can hold out this year.
What I cannot do is lose money with this”, says Jaume Guillamet, with 15 boxes in Castellet (Barcelona), where he lives.
Guillamet is a civil servant and 11 years ago he started with bees as a
hobby
.
“Unlike other productions, bees are very independent.
Normally it was enough to go on Saturdays, when I was free, to visit them.
Now, with the Asian invader, it is impossible.
They need me to go daily.
"And I don't have time," says Guillamet, who shares knowledge with Ramal to save his production.
“We help each other… we share ideas.
It concerns us all ”, he sentences.
The bees climb the Pyrenees
The Asian invasion is added to the perfect storm that, for years, has endangered the sector due to climate change.
Desertification ascends from the south and the Asian hornet descends from the north.
The increase in temperatures forces large producers to have to practice transhumance: move hives to the Pyrenees in height, so that they can pollinate and make honey.
In 20 years, this practice has doubled in Catalonia.
The number of hives has gone from 72,000 in 2002 to 118,000 in 2021, 60% more, according to data from the Department of Agriculture of the Generalitat.
The increase in honey production, however, has only increased by 9.2%.
This is so because the bee, increasingly weakened, is not able to produce as before.
"100 bees do what 50 used to do," says Ramal,
while emptying a trap full of wasps.
“It is the pacemaker of the ecosystem.
When they fail, we all follow behind”, he adds about the bees.
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