Bees drive away unwanted crows
The Asahi Shinbun reports that beehives are being placed on Tokyo rooftops to protect endangered migratory bird nests from crows:
Previous efforts to ward off crows–by putting up fishing lines and constructing brick shelters–had little effect.
But two years ago, a sewerage bureau official learned on television that honeybees may actually deter crows, and contacted the Ginza Bee Project, an NPO that keeps bees on building rooftops covering an area of about 6.2 hectares in Tokyo’s Ginza district.
Atsuo Tanaka, the Ginza project’s facilitator, said that bees seemed to be protecting a shrine in the Ginza from crows that had broken white dishes used to hold offerings.
Last summer, the team placed two beehives on the rooftop of the water plant and found that the little terns and their protectors got along fine.
This year the team installed multiple hives, each containing about 10,000 to 20,000 bees. It says it will keep a close eye on the progress of its buzzing army of scarecrows.
