European Bee-Eater

European Bee-Eater: Species Facts

Range & Habitat

In Spain the European bee-eater breeds across most of the Iberian Peninsula except the Eurosiberian north and the high Pyrenees, and in the Balearic Islands, where it is very scarce on Mallorca and the Pityusic islands; it does not breed in the Canary Islands, Ceuta or Melilla. Spain's third breeding bird atlas (fieldwork 2014–2018, published by SEO/BirdLife in 2022) estimated that its breeding range had grown by 7 % since the previous atlas (1998–2002), mostly at its northern limit.^[7]

It is not demanding about habitat as long as it has somewhere to dig its nest: banks, cliffs, gravel pits, gullies, dunes and the edges of rivers and lakes, in soft sand, clay or gypsum soils into which it excavates its nest tunnels. It prefers open or partly open country — farmland mosaics, dehesas, scrub and steppe — and is absent only from dense woodland and from wetlands without banks. A 2025 study in Doñana describes how the species breeds in groups, digging its tunnel nests deep enough underground to soften the effect of surface temperature, in soil soft enough to dig but firm enough not to collapse.^[5][7]

Bee-eaters nest as isolated pairs or in colonies ranging from a few pairs to several hundred, and some birds that do not breed, many of them in their second year, help to build the nest and feed the chicks (MITECO breeding bird atlas, 2003). In Doñana National Park, a 2016 study describes the species as present between March and August: digging nests in April–May, laying a single clutch of 4–7 eggs in May–June and feeding the nestlings in June–July, with both sexes incubating and caring for the young.^[1][4]

It is a trans-Saharan migrant that spends most of the year in Africa, and spring passage through the Iberian Peninsula goes on until the end of May. In a study published in 2021, adult bee-eaters from breeding colonies in Portugal were tracked with geolocators between 2015 and 2018: all of them spent the non-breeding season in West Africa, between Senegal and Nigeria, most of them in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, on average about 3,200 km from their colonies, and all travelled along the western coast of Africa. They left the colonies between 26 July and 31 August and arrived back between 27 March and 23 April. A 2021 review noted that the African wintering areas and routes of Spain's own bee-eaters had not yet been traced.^[2][3]

The third breeding bird atlas (SEO/BirdLife, 2022) estimates the Spanish breeding population from 2014–2018 data at about 2.6 million birds, with around 280,000 of them in Extremadura according to its model. Its authors stress that bee-eaters are hard to count with the usual census methods and that the national figure still differs markedly from estimates built from regional atlases, which would suggest a more modest 200,000–300,000 pairs. In Extremadura, a survey by the University of Extremadura's Conservation Biology Research Group, cited as published in 2007, found 73 colonies with 803 pairs along the Zújar river in La Serena (Badajoz); extrapolated to the region, that would mean around 10,750 pairs, a figure the 2021 review considers open to criticism.^[2][7]

Earlier figures, for the record: the 1997 atlas estimated 23,000–30,000 pairs in Spain; the data gathered for the 1998–2002 atlas gave a minimum of 105,279 pairs, with no data for 19 % of the squares (MITECO, 2003); and a later estimate for 2004–2006 put the population at almost 6 million birds.^[1][2][7]

Threats

A long, moderate decline. According to the 2021 review, data from SEO/BirdLife's SACRE common breeding bird monitoring programme show the Spanish population falling by 0.8 % a year between 1998 and 2019, and by 1.4 % a year from 2006 onwards. The fall is steeper in the northern part of the range (1.6 % a year) and is more apparent in the west of the peninsula and in the Balearic Islands. The causes are unknown, because basic information on the species' demography is lacking.^[1][2]

Conflict with beekeeping, which the 2021 review considers probably the main threat today. A deep-rooted belief that bee-eaters ruin hives has led to nests being blocked up, although all the studies cited by the review found the birds' effect on hives and their productivity to be small or nil. The 2022 atlas notes that direct persecution linked to this conflict can cause high mortality locally, and that effective measures to reduce the birds' impact on apiaries have been proposed.^[2][7]

Fewer bees and wasps. The 2022 atlas says that the decline of Hymenoptera caused by agricultural intensification and pesticide use could have widespread effects by reducing the bee-eater's main food, and the 2021 review suggests that the species' decline may be linked to that crisis. Pesticides could also harm the birds directly, through contaminated prey.^[2][7]

Loss of nesting sites, which can be serious locally: gravel extraction, degradation of riverbanks, disturbance from tourism on coastal dunes, lining of irrigation channels with concrete and the disappearance of earth banks between fields as farming intensifies. In the other direction, new tracks and roads, which usually create earth banks, have allowed new colonies to form. In Doñana, where there are no natural slopes and nests dug into the ground are easily collapsed by trampling livestock, a 2025 study found that by 2022 about 97 % of the nests counted in the National Park and its Special Protection Areas were on roadsides, where the birds face a greater risk of being killed by traffic.^[2][5]

Conditions far from Spain. As a trans-Saharan migrant, the 2022 atlas notes, its population may also depend on what the birds find along their migration routes and in their African wintering grounds.^[7]

Conservation Status & Work

Merops apiaster: Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (global assessment of the species, published in 2024).^[8]

In Spain the bee-eater is included in the Listado de Especies Silvestres en Régimen de Protección Especial (List of Wild Species under Special Protection) under Real Decreto 139/2011, without a threat category in the Catálogo Español de Especies Amenazadas. Under the earlier national catalogue (Real Decreto 439/1990) it had been classed «de interés especial», a category that no longer exists under Law 42/2007.^[2][6]

Its numbers are followed by SEO/BirdLife's SACRE common breeding bird monitoring programme, with a population series from 1998, and its range and population were mapped and estimated in the national breeding bird atlases of 1998–2002 (2003; its species accounts are published on MITECO's website) and 2014–2018 (SEO/BirdLife, 2022).^[1][7]

The 2021 review sets out what is still needed: a national census designed for the species, basic studies of its natural history and demography, tracking to find where Spain's bee-eaters winter in Africa and the routes they use to get there, and an effort to dispel the belief that they cause serious damage to beekeeping, working with beekeepers on hive management. The 2003 atlas had already called for an inventory and direct protection of the largest colonies, including the artificial creation of earth banks in suitable places.^[1][2]