The Tirajana thermal power plant technician who whispers to the bees

Fernando Marrero was born in San Mateo, a town heavily linked to livestock farming, agriculture and rich in nature. However, since he was child, he has spent much time repairing and supervising the complex machinery at Endesa's thermal power plant in Barranco de Tirajana. In fact, he is an Instrument and Control technician for this complex, where most of the energy for Gran Canaria is generated.

However, Fernando is a multi-faceted man and when he finishes work at the plant, he devotes his time to what he loves the best: beekeeping. He says that contact with nature makes him feel freer and more attached to the earth every time he climbs the Pozo de Las Nieves, a place very close to the Pico de Las Nieves to which he gives his name and which is the highest point in Gran Canaria. There he takes great care of his four bee hives, located in a natural setting, rich in pollination plants and far from the gaze of man.

He is clearly nostalgic when he says that before the fire that devastated the summit of the Island in September 2017 he had ten bee hives, but the fire significantly reduced his apiary which now has four hives.

A few weeks ago he was working amongst machinery at the Tirajana plant when he received news that a group of colleagues had gone on a visit to Temisas, in the municipality of Agüimes, the future location of a cabin to measure air quality and that they had left terrified by a swarm of bees.

The bees had chosen to nest in the building of the Astronomical Observatory in Temisas. There were now so many of them that they completely occupied a chamber between two walls.

"None of the workers wanted to come to work in that place until it was free of bees and the situation was complicated. A colleague had even been stung a number of times. One of the measures they thought of taking was to use machinery to break down the two walls and leave them in the open air, but that meant the imminent death of the bees" explained Fernando Marrero.

For that family of bees, the refuge in Temisas had so far made a perfect home, but it is not always easy to combine the manoeuvres involved in electrical work with the laborious movement of a swarm of bees.

Fernando Marrero started to think how he could rescue that swarm of Canary Island black bees consisting of about 10,000 individuals without causing them any damage. That is when he came up with the funnel technique.

He went up to the Astronomical Observatory in Temisas where no one wanted to go because of the risk of being stung. He dressed up in his protective beekeeper's suit and climbed up the stairs to attach a box to the wall. Then he placed a funnel that allowed them to leave, but when they tried to go back into their nest again they found the hole boarded up. The box acted as a hive and measured just 40 by 20 centimetres, with the bees building new honeycombs inside.