LIMA, Peru (AP) — Alfredo Santiago has a unique job in the Peruvian capital Lima: he is a bee rescuer.
The 35-year-old started out as a beekeeper, but added stinging insect rescue to his services. He often checks his cell phone for messages from people seeking help removing hives from the windows of houses, playgrounds or even cemeteries.
“I do it out of passion, to defend these animals that are so important to nature,” he said.
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Once he gets enough requests, Santiago puts on his white one-piece beekeeping suit, takes a smoker and a wooden box and takes to the streets of Lima, a city of 10 million people.
Sometimes Santiago arrives at a location and people have already killed the bees. But if he can save them, he takes them back to his home on the outskirts of Lima, where he lives as a beekeeper and sells honey.
He’s apparently the only person in town doing the work for free. “It’s volunteer work. Some plant trees, others collect abandoned dogs or cats,” says Santiago, whose parents are also beekeepers.
“I am the driver, the one who carries the box, the operator, the one who (fastens himself with) harnesses, the one who takes the photo and uploads it to the networks,” he said as he checked the dark green car. which he drives through the city.
Recently, Santiago had to drive more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) from one side of Lima to the other to find a beehive in the yard of a house. He also went to a cemetery after a man who had gone to bury his mother was stung by some bees, and they discovered that the insects had found a home on a wooden box.
Santiago says he gets about 100 requests to come and remove beehives every year, and he estimates he has saved about 4 million bees since he started his unpaid job in 2020. People got to know him on social media.
Life for bees in Lima is not easy because the densely populated city does not have many parks or green spaces.
On the large patio of his home, Santiago has more than twenty green wooden boxes in which more than 400,000 bees live and “recover” after being rescued. Honey is spread over two plates, while a few drops of water come from a tap and fall on a piece of wood. Everything for the bees. After a few months, sometimes six, he takes them to the Andean forests of Peru, more than 225 kilometers from Lima, where his parents live and also care for bees.
It’s a family affair: Santiago said he’s already thinking about buying a small beekeeping suit for his three-year-old daughter.
