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.

Co-op weighs into battle to save honeybees

The Co-op has announced that suppliers of its own-brand produce will henceforth be banned from using eight pesticides "implicated" in Colony Collapse Disorder - the unexplained disappearance of millions of honeybees which has hit hives worldwide.

The supermarket chain said growers on its 70,000 acres of land in England and Scotland would not "where possible" use the neonicotinoid family of chemicals "until they are shown to be safe", as the Guardian puts it. The Co-op has, the paper notes, since 2001 "prohibited the use of 98 pesticides under its pesticide policy".

Scientific tests have suggested a possible link between one of the banned chemicals, imidacloprid, and disruption of honeybees' "sophisticated communication and navigation systems". France banned its use as a sunflower seed-dressing inseciticide ten years ago, while Germany, Italy and Slovenia last year slapped a blanket ban on the use of neonicotinoids in reponse to the honeybee crisis.

Simon Press, Co-op group senior technical manager, said: "We believe that the recent losses in bee populations need definitive action, and as a result are temporarily prohibiting the eight neonicotinoid pesticides until we have evidence that refutes their involvement in the decline."

The Co-op's pesticide ban forms part of its 10-point Plan Bee, which also includes £150,000 "for research into the impact of pesticides on the decline of honeybees in England". Co-op members and customers will benefit from a bee-friendly wildflower seed giveaway.

The Co-op's campaign does not stop at its own doorstep, however. Its head of social goals, Paul Monaghan, said the government had failed to recognise that "pesticides could be a contributing factor" in the honeybees' dramatic decline.

Elliott Carnell, coordinator of Pesticide Action Network Europe, agreed, accusing: "The government has fought against any attempts to protect bees, which pollinate a third of the average diet. It argues that banning pesticides jeopardises crop yields, but if that was the case why would a leading food retailer be introducing this measure?"

While the government has hedged its bets as to what might be responsible for bee deaths, and prefers not to mention Colony Collapse Disorder, it is not entirely indifferent to the crisis. It recently stumped £4.3m "to safeguard and undertake more research into the health of bees" following the Department for Environment, Food And Rural Affairs' (Defra) decision last year to give "higher priority" to investigating the matter.

Defra's analysis to date is the possible implication of abnormally wet weather - which may have hindered the bees' ability to collect enough food to survive the winter - coupled with the single-celled fungus Nosema, which might have taken advantage of the insects' rain-induced confinement and stressed state to spread with deadly effect.

What is man's best friend?

The topic came up recently in conversation, which really is man's best friend?

Straight away the more adrenalin driven friends said that it was the dog. The dog is the only animal that will step in between us and an attacker and lay its life on the line for us, so it must be our best friend. Immediately I felt rapport with that point of view, I have cried, unashamedly, like a baby at the end of life of so many dogs that I shared a great love with.

Then others step in and say that it is the cat, the cat is continuously on guard around us, protecting us from all things that it can physically control, and warning us about other predators.

This awoke a feeling of sympathy from me, especially as I owe my life to a cat.

As a child of about 6 months of age, my mother put me in a playpen outside on the lawn outside our home to enjoy the sun and play to my hearts content. Smuttsy, our cat, as usual took up a guarding position at the edge of the lawn and the day drifted along.

The house was in the married quarters at the Royal Norwegian Airforce base at Kjevik, near Kristiansand in Southern Norway. When, suddenly, my mother heard screaming from the garden from both me and Smuttsy, and she dashed to the kitchen window to see a huge viper on the lawn trying to get to me, with Smuttsy attached by her teeth to its head and shaking it as hard as she could. I was cheering on Smuttsy, with no understanding of what was happening.

My mother dashed outside clutching a broom, and upon seeing her approaching as well, the viper gave up it foray and desperately retreated to the woods with Smuttsy still hanging on, screaming and spitting, until she emerged a few minutes later, swaggering over her triumph. Since then, almost every cat I have lived with (never owned a single one of them) was named Smuttsy, I could do no less for my babyhood saviour, and so it must be my best friend ever?

Then again, someone else turned around and said that man's best friend is the honeybee. That sounds a bit extreme I thought, but then I was given the facts.

Some 250,000 species of flowering plants depend on bees for pollination. Many of these are crucial to world agriculture. Bees increase the yields of around 90 crops, such as apples, blueberries and cucumbers by up to 30%, so many fruits and vegetables would become scarce and prohibitively expensive.

In addition, many of our medicines, both conventional and alternative remedies, come from flowering plants. And cotton is another essential product pollinated by the bee, so we could say goodbye to cheap T-shirts and jeans.

But it's not just the human race that would suffer. Spare a thought for the poor birds and small mammals that feed off the berries and seeds that rely on bee pollination. They would die of hunger and in turn their predators – the omnivores or carnivores that continue the food chain would also starve. We could survive on wind-pollinated grains and fish, but there would be wars for control of dwindling food supplies. South America's ancient Mayan civilisation is thought to have died of starvation.

Although other insects and animals do pollinate – such as bats, butterflies and even wasps – none is designed like the bee as a pollinator machine. Who would want a world without honey, flowers, and third of everything we eat including chocolate and coffee? Not me. There are 20,000 bee species around the world including solitary bees, bumblebees and honeybees. Many are monoletic – pollinate one plant – others like bumblebees and honeybees are polylectic. While bumblebees live in colonies of a few hundred, the sheer number of honeybees in a hive – up to 50,000 in the summer - and their ability to be managed, manipulated and transported by man makes them the most valuable pollinator.

Unfortunately all bees are already under serious threat. Industrialised farming with its monocultures and pesticides has destroyed biodiversity and robbed the majority of bees of their habitat and food. While across the globe, the western honeybee – bred for its gentle nature and prolific honey making and pollination – is plagued by parasites and viruses, and also jeopardised by modern agricultural practices. More than a third of honeybees were wiped out in the US this year by Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease which is thought to be a combination of these assailants.

Bee populations are in free fall, and a world without bees would be totally catastrophic for mankind. The bee advocates maintained that the work done for us by the bees, and the fact that they do not harm us in any way, unless they feel themselves threatened, makes them our best friends, and we should be doing everything in our power to save and allow then to prosper as one our very best friends.

And that's how I left the question of man's best friend. I have loved and laughed with my dog and cat life companions, I can never do that with the honeybee, but I can treat it as my most valuable co-existing friend. I leave lavender flowering into the winter to give them late food and I have other plants flowering early to give them feed before the main crops burst into flower. It is just a question of becoming aware of the unique relationship we have with the honeybee.

Another friend, who is a bee-keeper, seemed surprised that not everybody thinks this way.

Bees march on Parliament

Next Wednesday, on November 5, a swarm of beekeepers is marching on the Houses of Parliament, puffing their apiarist smokers and calling for MPs to save the British honeybee. Their 130,000-name petition is nothing short of a cry for survival in the face of serious bee-deaths and dire native honey shortages. The situation is so bad that there will be no English honey by Christmas, according to the Honey Association.

The harvest has been dreadful. While some beekeepers had a decent crop, the majority suffered badly. Bees die every winter but the losses this year were up 25 per cent or more, rather than a more standard 5-10 per cent. Worst of all, the wet spring and summer meant that the bees stayed in their hives. No flights, no nectar, no honey. “Last year I did two farmers' markets a month, and craft fairs and county shows. I did a Christmas fair at Ripon Cathedral with huge amounts of honey,” says Rusty Wise, who has been keeping bees for 20 years. “This year I've had 26 jars. The greatest problem is the weather, but this goes farther.”

What is happening to the bees? This is the question asked by the march's organisers, the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA). Its petition will plead with MPs to find £8 million for research. Beekeepers need help. British honey is still a small-scale industry, with just a tenth of it sold in supermarkets. Much is still found in village stores and farmers' markets.

This is more than a question of what we spread on our toast. Bees are worth an estimated £165 million to agriculture through pollinating the plants that provide a third of the food we eat, including such common crops as orchard fruits, carrots, broccoli and onions.

For gardeners, they pollinate our flowers and vegetable plots and ensure our supply of seed for next year. This situation cannot be allowed to continue. Why are not the RHS involved in this immediate and crucial crisis? Why are they aways involved in an abstract, dreamland that most of can't comprehend?

No honey by Christmas

English honey will run out by Christmas because pests have decimated the honey bee population, shoppers were warned last night.

Billions of bees have been wiped out in America and Europe and British bees are under attack from a killer mite.

As every third mouthful of the food we consume is linked to bee pollination, scientists say the collapse of bee colonies will have a massive impact on food supplies and prices.

Flowering crops such as beans, peas, strawberries and raspberries will not produce fruit. The pollinating services of bees are estimated to be worth £165million a year to the UK economy.

Stuart Bailey, director of the Honey Association, is quoted as saying that: “There will be no English honey on the shelves of supermarkets at Christmas though there will be some from abroad. Consumers will not get English honey unless they buy it from local bee keepers but they too will sell out quite quickly.”

Mr Bailey called on the Government to pump more money into bee research. The British Beekeepers Association wants the current spend of about £200,000 a year to increase to £8million over five years.

Fungus Foot Baths Could Save Bees

Varroa on bee pupae. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Warwick)

ScienceDaily (2008-07-28) -- One of the biggest world wide threats to honey bees, the varroa mite, could soon be about to meet its nemesis. Researchers at the University of Warwick are examining naturally occurring fungi that kill the varroa mite. They are also exploring a range of ways to deliver the killer fungus throughout the hives from bee fungal foot baths to powder sprays. ... read full article

Canna hybridizers have an extra interest in the preservation of the honey-bee, as the most prolific of pollinators in Northern Europe, and elsewhere.

Hornets hit France and could reach Britain

Swarms of giant hornets renowned for their vicious stings and skill at massacring honeybees have settled in France. And there are now so many of the insects that entomologists fear it will just be a matter of time before they cross to Britain.

Global warming has largely been blamed for the survival and spread of the Asian Hornet, Vespa velutina, which is thought to have arrived in France from the Far East in a consignment of Chinese pottery in late 2004. Thousands of football-shaped hornet nests are now dotted all over the forests of Aquitaine, the south-western region of France hugely popular with British tourists.

"Their spread across French territory has been like lightning," said Jean Haxaire, the entomologist who originally identified the new arrival. He said he had recently seen 85 nests in the 40-odd miles which separate the towns of Marmande and Podensac, in the Lot et Garonne department where the hornets were first spotted.

The hornets can grow to up to 1.8in and, with a wingspan of 3in, are renowned for inflicting a bite which has been compared to a hot nail entering the body. A handful can destroy a nest of 30,000 bees in just a couple of hours — a major concern among the beekeeping industry.

"The problems are not necessarily public health ones, but ecological ones. These hornets can cause immense damage to beehives," said Mr Haxaire. The hornets are renowned for feeding their young with the larvae of other social insects, including bees, whose nests they break into and ransack. The French beekeeping industry has already been decimated by pesticides and long, hot summers. Honey production from the 1.3 million hives run by 80,000 beekeepers has been decreasing annually — down by 60 per cent in south-western France during the past decade.

A spokesman for the French National Been Surveillance Unit said the bee death rate during winter was now up to six in ten. As a result France has to import some 25,000 tons of honey annually. "The arrival of these hornets has made the situation considerably worse," the spokesman added. "The future of our entire industry is at stake."

Yesterday, there was concern that it may not take long before the Asian hornet makes its way to Britain. "There's no doubt that these hornets are heading north and will probably find their way to Britain at some point," said Stuart Hine, manager of the Insect Information Service at London's Natural History Museum. "Climate change certainly means they can cope with European summers. However, they would still have difficulty coping with our winter frosts."

While some 40 people a year die from hornet stings — mainly because of allergic reactions — Claire Villement, of France's Natural History Museum, said there was no need for a "national panic about killer wasps".

Mrs Villement said: "The legend that three bites from a hornet can kill you are totally false. People can still enjoy their picnics in the countryside."

Honey bees in England are already under threat from colony-collapse disorder, and this latest threat is not at all welcome. We have noticed in the last few years that we now have more wasps than honey bees fertilising our Cannas. Wasps are unpleasant creatures, and I much prefer sharing our Cannas with the honey-bee than with them.