Insight into Free-Living Honey Bee Population in Serbia’s Capital – A COLOSSal Walk around Belgrade

Abstract

In the past years, a surprisingly large number of free-living honey bee colonies was recorded in Belgrade, capital of Serbia (Bila Dubaić et al., 2021). Since there are no public city services that citizens could turn to if they notice a colony of free-living honey bees in their proximity, a large portion of such cases are reported to beekeepers. Owing mostly to the engagement of one Belgrade beekeeper, scientists of the Faculty of Biology University of Belgrade obtained a large set of data on free-living honey bees in Belgrade. The collected data covers a period of 7 years (2011–2017) and, after elimination of dubious and duplicated reports, the number of recorded swarms and colonies exceeded 1300 (Figure 1). Why are Free-Living Honey Bees Important? After massive honey bee die-off throughout Eurasia and North America due to the spread of ectoparasite Varroa destructor (Le Conte et al., 2010; Potts et al., 2010), it was generally thought that untreated colonies could not survive (Büchler et al., 2010; Oleksa et al., 2013), or if they do