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First it was the Asian wasp and now the big Asian bee, gigantic if we compare it to our little bees. She is already in Barcelona, settled, as shown by these photographs taken in the Pedralbes monastery for Las Fotos de los Lectores de La Vanguardia.
At noon I was contemplating the new nest of bees on the wall of the monastery gardens, when, suddenly, I saw a very large bee on the ground a little further away. It is the first time I see a specimen of these dimensions.
It didn't fly, but it moved. It has been possible for me to be close to him and make this photographic report. It is very robust and strong, compared to the native bees we are used to.
The truth is that the Asian giant resin bee is colonizing Spain. This invasive species has expanded at a dizzying rate in the last decade due to globalization and associated human activities.
This bee measures between 14 and 24 mm. It is much larger than others, although we can still find larger bees. It is native to Japan and China. It was accidentally introduced to the eastern United States and Ontario, Canada in recent times and is abundant in the New York region.
In Europe it was cited for the first time in the vicinity of Marseille, France, in 2009, while in 2018 it was detected for the first time in Spain.
These bees use existing cavities, including those made by carpenter bees (whose presence is common in the Pedralbes monastery) to make their nests. They use mud and resin to build the nest, hence their name.
These bees build cells that they supply with pollen where they deposit one egg per cell. They can complete up to ten cells.
According to a scientific study carried out by the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, since it was detected in Europe, this bee has colonized a large part of the countries in the center of the European continent at a very fast pace. and its population have multiplied by ten in recent years.
In the case of Spain, this invasive species, which is not aggressive despite its large size, is concentrated above all on the eastern Mediterranean coast.
It is not strange, then, that he has settled in Barcelona, because, in addition, he is a very urban bee. It uses ports, communication routes and densely populated cities to expand and reproduce.
The giant resin bee arrived in Europe, most likely, by shipping timber (with some nests inside) and once here the roads have served to disperse the species. And Barcelona is one of the great ports in the world and, above all, in the Mediterranean.
