Bees are urbanites now

• Bees are better off in the town than the country, according to new National Trust research that found the insects thrive in urban areas.
• Researchers in our home city at the University of Worcester analysed the pollen collected by bees from 45 hives on National Trust property around the country.
• They found that bees in towns and cities have a much more “varied diet”, taking pollen from different flowers.
• For example at Kensington Palace in London, where the Duke of Gloucester is keeping bee hives, the samples contained large amounts of pollen from rockrose, eucalyptus and elderberry.
• In contrast bees in the countryside tended to rely on fields of crops. At Nostell Priory in Yorkshire and Barrington Court in Somerset, the samples were heavily dominated by oilseed rape with little other pollen types detectable.
• In the last 20 years there has been a dramatic 50 per cent decline in bee numbers in Britain.
• Climate change, pesticides and even a mystery disease known as ‘colony collapse disorder have been blamed’.
• Experts also believe that intensive farming may have contributed to the decline of bees because it means there is less wild flowers in the countryside to provide the insects with a ’varied diet’.
• Matthew Oates, Nature Conservation Adviser at the National Trust, said there are “precious few” pollen sources for bees in the countryside because farmland is either taken over for “monoculture” like wheat or barley or grazed for livestock.
• He urged farmers to allow more wild flowers on field margins and to plant seed mixes in unused areas.
• Mr Oates also said the study showed how important urban beekeepers are to boosting numbers and called on more people to install a bee hive in the town.
• “These are interesting early findings, seemingly backing what we've suspected for a while - namely that bees today often fare better in urban environments than in contemporary farmland,” he said.
• Already the middle class fad for keeping bees has seen a doubling in hives over the past two years, according to the British Beekeepers Association, with many new beekeepers coming from towns and cities.