A World Without Bees

Here are some links to new stories on a UN report published today on the continuing decline of honeybees.

The Guardian: Globalisation and agriculture industry exacerbating bee decline, says UN 

The Independent: ‘Decline fo honeybees now a global phenomenon’

The data from China and Japan which confirms that they are losing large numbers of honeybees is new but not surprisingly given they are using the same western honeybee. 

 I think it is more significant that the UN  lumps  honeybees together with other pollinators and suggests we can substitute them with wild bee pollinators. Yes, of course we need to increase habitats and forage for other bees, but don’t think managing bumble bees and solitary bees is going to be a panacea to a potential pollination crisis if the same stresses are present i.e. bee-toxic pesticides.

 My views on the report are posted on The Guardian, or you can read them below.

It is significant that on the cover of today’s Unep report on global honeybee colony disorders is a photo of a honeybee with a varroa mite clearly visible on her thorax. This external parasite, which feeds on bees‘ circulatory fluid, spreads viral diseases and bacteria from hive to hive, and if left unchecked it will lead to the premature death of bee colonies – and is the most serious threat to the western honeybee in almost every country, say the report’s authors.

Yet in 2006 when US beekeepers began to report the disappearance of their bees – a mysterious phenomenon that wiped out more than a third of colonies at its height in 2007-08 and was named colony collapse disorder – no one was interested in this pinhead-sized parasite.

Varroa had already been in the USA for 20 years. A group of US scientists wanted to find a new killer. They identified a number of suspects, many of whom are highlighted in today’s report including virulent fungal infections; memory-damaging pesticides applied in the field or used by beekeepers to control mite levels in hives; and poor diet from low-protein monoculture crops. A combination of some, or all of these factors, was creating the conditions, they concluded, that suppressed the bees’ immune system.

Five years after honeybee deaths made headlines worldwide and continue to be a problem in many parts of the world, scientists in the US and Europe who collaborated on this report accept that varroa-spread viruses and bacteria are helping to kill weak bees. But climate change and air pollution have been added to the honeybees’ ever-growing list of assailants.

Interestingly the report also refers to electric and magnetic fields from sources such as power lines that may be changing bee behaviour. This potential threat was dismissed by the scientific community when I was researching a book about the causes of the honeybees’ decline. The role of pesticides was also initially played down. Since then, France, Italy, Germany and Slovakia have temporarily suspended the use of some systemic pesticides because of their implication in bee deaths, but the report makes no mention of what impact this has had. It may be too early to tell or the results are inconclusive. It does however admit that pesticides “can weaken the honeybee’s immune system and hamper bees’ ability to fight infection”. But rather than calling for a ban pending further tests it timidly suggests that farmers and gardeners apply pesticides more carefully or switch to non-toxic methods.

Most significantly, the Unep report does not look at honeybees in isolation but as one of the insects and animals that contributes €153bn globally by pollinating crops. Taken together it concludes there is insufficient data to demonstrate a current worldwide pollinator crisis.

Yet it points to a potential crisis unless we reverse the loss of habitat and flowers that are threatening wild pollinators such as bumble bees and solitary bees and rightly calls for famers who plant wild flower margins and set-aside land to restore habitats and food for pollinators to be financially rewarded.

But the authors are misguided in their belief that one way to avert a crisis is by conserving populations of wild bees, and even managing them where possible, to compensate for the continual loses of managed honeybees. The wild bees that we expose to pesticide-sprayed fields, monoculture crops and management by humans could all suffer the same fate as our immune-suppressed honeybee. Bumble bees that managed to pollinate tomatoes, for example, suffer from diseases that have spread to wild bumble bees. Until we have tackled and then eliminated the underlying causes of honeybee deaths, substituting one failing pollinator for another will not be a panacea.

Press Release, December 8 2010: Beekeepers and environmentalists today called on EPA to remove a pesticide linked to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), citing a leaked EPA memo that discloses a critically flawed scientific support study. The November 2nd

Bayer’s field study was the contingency on which clothianidin’s conditional registration was granted in 2003. The groups are calling for an immediate stop-use order on the pesticide while the science is redone in partnership with practicing beekeepers. They claim that the initial field study guidelines, which the Bayer study failed to satisfy, were insufficiently rigorous to test whether or not clothianidin contributes to CCD in a real-world scenario: the field test evaluated the wrong crop, over an insufficient time period and with inadequate controls.

According to James Frazier, Ph.D., professor of entomology at Penn State, “Among the neonicotinoids, clothianidin is among those most toxic for honey bees, and this combined with its systemic movement in plants has produced a troubling mix of scientific results pointing to its potential risk for honey bees through current agricultural practices. Our own research indicates that systemic pesticides occur in pollen and nectar in much greater quantities than has been previously thought, and that interactions among pesticides occurs often and should be of wide concern.” Dr. Frazier said that the most prudent course of action would be to take the pesticide off the market while the flawed study is being redone.

With a soil half-life of up to 19 years in heavy soils, and over a year in the lightest of soils, commercial beekeepers are concerned that even an immediate stop-use of clothianidin will not save their livelihoods or hives in time.

“We are losing more than a third of our colonies each winter, but beekeepers are a stubborn, industrious bunch. We split hives, rebound as much as we can each summer, and then just eat our losses. So even these big loss numbers understate the problem,” says 50-year beekeeper, David Hackenberg. “What folks need to understand is that the beekeeping industry, which is responsible for a third of the food we eat, is at a critical threshold for economic reasons and reasons to do with bee population dynamics. Our bees are living for 30 days instead of 42, nursing bees are having to forage because there aren‟t enough foragers and at a certain point a colony just doesn‟t have the critical mass to keep going. The bees are at that point, and we are at that point. We are losing our livelihoods at a time when there just isn‟t other work. Another winter of „more studies are needed‟ so Bayer can keep their blockbuster products on the market and EPA can avoid a difficult decision, is unacceptable.”Citing the imminent economic and environmental hazards posed by the continued use of clothianidin, the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, Beekeeping Federation, Beyond Pesticides, Pesticide Action Network, North America and Center for Biological Diversity are asking EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to exercise the Agency‟s emergency powers to take the pesticide off the market.

Heather Pilatic, Pesticide Action Network, http://www.panna.org/, cell: +1-415-694-8596, Heather@panna.org

Jay Feldman, Beyond Pesticides, http://www.beyondpesticides.org, +1-202-543-5450, ext 15, jfeldman@beyondpesticides.org

About time I got this blog going again as the bees are still dying and we’ve still not be able to finger the pesticide companies.

Some slightly encouraging news today from the British BeeKeepers’ Association that is has finally decided to ditch its endorsement of pesticide products five years after its secretive deal came to light.

But the statement it has put out to local associations makes it clear that it has no intention of severing links with the manufacturers of pesticides that are highly toxic to bees and whose sub-lethal effects on honeybees have yet to be measured. In fact the relationship may become even closer as BBKA president, Martin Smith, says:

“It is time to broaden the range of engagement with the crop protection industry beyond the narrow focus of endorsing certain products; rather to contribute more directly to the development of new regulatory criteria for pesticide approval and to further support the industry in the general move to improve countryside stewardship.”

Particularly shocking is the language that the BBKA is now using to describe the pesticide industry. It has adopted the industry’s own terminology, referring to it as the “crop protection” industry and “crop protection” companies and its lobby group calls itself the Crop Protection Association.

Phil Chandler who has continually campaigned against the BBKA’s endorsement policy is critical of the organisation for never speaking out against the pesticide industry when their products have been implicated in the killing of millions of bee worldwide.

“My interest in this is a strong personal belief that a charity constituted to protect the interests of bees should not accept money from corporations whose commercial interests include the sale of extremely toxic insecticides, proven to be lethal to bees, on the grounds that such transactions will inevitably influence BBKA policies and actions.”

David Ramsden, a member of Twickenham and Thames Valley Beekeepers’ Association, who has been at the forefront of challenging the BBKA policy. He got a motion against the policy put on the agenda at the BBKA annual delegates meeting earlier this year. He says:

“The policy of endorsement has diminished the BBKA. It has robbed of transparency of purpose. Until it is stopped, the motives of any action or pronouncement the BBKA makes on the topic of pesticides will be open to cynicism. Is this a position that any national organization should find itself in?”

In response to today’s statement Chandeler says:

“Far from distancing themselves from these corporations, they appear to be ever more willing to embrace them (and their vocabulary) and thus further compromise their ability to speak freely about the dangers to bees from agricultural pesticides.

For me, the ethical considerations trump everything. For an organisation purporting to be working in the interests of bees to publicly walk hand in hand with the manufacturers of the very substances that are killing bees, other insects, birds and ultimately entire food chains, as well as endangering public health, while failing in any way to support the organic movement, is utterly anathema. “

He has a number of suggested actions:

(a) Request the BBKA sever all financial ties with corporations that have any interest in the manufacture or sale of insecticides or other agricultural chemicals known to be toxic to bees

(b) Request that the BBKA give explicit support for the Soil Association and the organic movement in general for their efforts in creating more habitat for bees and other pollinators.

(c) Request complete electoral reform in the BBKA, requiring all such matters to be openly debated, publicly reported on and voted on by all members.

What do you think?

So now we know. This year’s honeybee losses in the US are 33.8% - up from 29% last year and slightly down on the 36% reported in 2007/08. But it means the fourth year of unsustainable losses. The figures are from the latest Apiary Inspectors of America survey in conjuction with the Uunited States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA)’s Agricultural Research Service.

The online survey and interviews with more than 4,000 beekeepers - both commercial and small time beekeepers -  covered more than 22% of the estimated 2.46 million honeybee colonies in the US.

About 28% of surveyed beekeepers reported signs of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), compared with 26 % the previous year and 32%  the year before that. The primary indication of colony collapse is whether hives are found empty.

Those beekeepers reporting signs of CCD lost more of their bees (44%) compared to beekeepers who cited other reasons. They lost a quarter of their bee colonies. This seems to confirm what US scientists have been saying for some time that CCD is a contagious condition.

In the survey, 32% of beekeepers cited starvation, often the result of low honey production the previous summer, as the main cause of losses. That was followed by unfavorable weather conditions. A wet summer prevents the bees from foraging so they go into the winter malnourished, and may not be strong enough to last a long, harsh winter, especially if they are also weakened by viruses and pests (12%)  and poor-quality queen bees (10%) . Only 5% of beekeepers themselves self-reported CCD as the chief factor in their bees demise.

Dave Hackenberg, the Pennsylvia-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD in November 2006, criticises the survey for focusing on winter losses. He says by doing so,  it underplays serious  threats to honeybees during the summer from pesticide use and gives a false picture of the scale of the losses.  He says he lost 62% of his 2,600 colonies between May 2009 and April 2010.

Another report from the World Organisation for Animal Health has confirmed what most experts had already concluded, that there is no single cause for bee deaths around the world. Experts agreed that “irresponsbile pesticide use might have an impact on bee health in particular by weakening bees and increasing their susceptibility to different diseases”. But it also pointed the finger at the varroa mite, viruses, bacteria infections, and poor nutrition. It calls for better control, minotoring, inspections and diagnosis of disease, but it also suggested that the global trade of bees between countries was a major cause of contamination and that stricter guidelines and standards should be adopted.

Finally, research earlier this year from Penn State University, which has been leading investigations into CCD since its discovery, found that 121 different pesticides in bees wax and pollen. Read it here.

So what now? The conclusions we came to in our book still stand.

Add your responses to the Observer article I wrote this week to draw attention to the latest bee losses,  or leave comments here.

Preliminary reports from the US suggest that this could be the worst year yet for colony collapse disorder. As the almond pollination comes to an end in central valley, Eric Mussen , extension apiculturist at University of California, Davis, says that beekeepers’ losses this year in his state are ranging from 30-80%. Jeff Pettis, research leader for the US government’s Agricultural Research Service’s honey bee laboratory is quoted in the Washington Post as saying: “I am very concerned about this year based on what we have seen in California and other parts of the United States.”

 This will be the fourth year of surveying honeybee losses across the US since CCD. In 2007, beekeepers lost 32% of their colonies, in 2008 it was 36% and in 2009, 29%. But when 2010 figures are published in May, they could be the worse yet.

This should come as no surprise to readers of A World Without Bees. The stress factors affecting bees have not changed. Take poor nutrition – a combination of our monoculture methods of agriculture, which forces bees to feed on pollen-inferior crops such as cranberries and blueberries in the States and sunflowers in Europe, and the junk food diet of corn syrup and pollen substitutes fed to bees as a supplement.

 What about the pesticides and fungicides that tests have failed to prove aren’t harmfall to bees? They are still being used in the States.  And this spring in the wet almond groves more fungicide than normal has been sprayed by almond growers trying to prevent “bloom rot”.

The bees are still being trucked across time zones and climates to pollinate the almonds in February and March, when it’s too early in the season for them to be doing such hard work. It’s still pretty cold and bee colony is still building up.

The scientists are still doing the research trying to find the right mix of factors to recreate CCD in lab conditions so that they can have a better understand of what’s causing the die offs.

But what exactly are they going to do when they finally understand what many of use already know - that stress factors are compromising the honeybees immune system so they are uable to fend off the mites, viruses and, fungal disease?

Are they going to: tell the agrochemical companies to stop producing bee harmful pesticides; tell US farmers to produce their crops more sustainably rather than planting mile upon mile of the same crop; tell commercial beekeepers that beekeeping on that scale in the age of the varroa mite and nosema is contributing to bee stress and we should go back to farmers getting a few hives from their local beekeepers during pollination?

Oh, but there aren’t any local beekeepers because there’s nothing for their bees to eat 50 weeks of the year near those orchards, or those orchards, or those orchards planted with one pesticide-treated crop.

Perhaps we’ll get it when there aren’t enough honeybees left?

What will 2010 bring for the honeybees? Well, initial indicators from the US are not good. Dave Hackenberg,  the Pennsylvania beekeeper who discovered colony collapse disorder, speaking to me last month for an article in the New York Post said that his bees had dwindled earlier this winter than previous years.

“We had around 3,000 hives at the end of the summer, but they started shrinking early, so when we came to truck them to Florida [in December to get them ready for the almond pollination in California in February] there was only 2,000 of them left,” he told me.

He predicts that it could be the worst year yet for bee losses.

We’ll have a better idea from the US come February when half the nation’s 2.4m (if there are still that many) bee colonies arrive in California’s central valley.

If you think pesticides are the main culprit in the mysterious bee disappearance , you can take comfort from a ruling made by a US  district judge just before Christmas. She ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind approval for a pesticide, spirotetramat, manufactured by Bayer AG, which campaigners say is harmful to bees. Although the ban is based on EPA processes rather than product safety - the judge said the EPA didn’t properly seek comments or publicise the review process - it is perhaps indicative of a shift in attitude towards the mightychemical companies and their federal bed fellows.

Jeff Pettis, head of bee research at the USDA, told the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America on 12 December, that new research into neonicotinoid pesticides showed that bees exposured to them didn’t die from the pesticides but ended up with three to four times as many spores of the potentially lethal fungal pathogen, Nosema ceranae. He also said that a comparison of hives trucked around the US verus stationary hives has found higher egg and larval losses in the transported colonies. Bees on the road also fail to mange their hive temperature at the necessary 34 degrees F. This could account for the loss of brood. So could this spell the end for migratory beekeeping. I think not?

The reason for the article in the New York Post, in case you were wondering, is that A World without Bees is now published in the States. It’s also been translated into German, where it is called ‘Welt ohne Bienen’.

Interest in what the public can do to save the bees continues. This month’s taster beekeeping courses run by UrbanBees are almost full.

The role of pesticides in the death of honeybees is once more in the spotlight. The Co-op group, which you may remember launched Plan Bee earlier this year,  was this week calling on government to fund research into the  impact of the neonicotinoid group of pesticides . The company has prohibited the pesticides on its farms until it is proven they do not harm honeybees.

None of the £10m set aside for pollinator research in the UK this year is going towards pesticide research. Why is this? Could it be because the funders, such as the Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the universities which could untake the research are all reliant on the pesticide manufacturers for future funding? Is the British government in the pocket of these giant chemical companies?

The Co-op is so convinced that university departments are influenced by these companies, it refuses to name the reseachers it has awarded a £100,000 grant in order for them to further investigate Italian findings that drops of water from sweetcorn (maize) plants irrigated wth the pesticides can kill the bees.

Despite Conservation charity, Buglife, collecting all the research there is on the harm neonicotinoid, imidacloprid does to the health and life cycle of bees and submitting it to Michael Jacobs, the prime minister’s special advisor on environment issues, last month, the government won’t budge on its position.

It says all the relevant research was done when the chemical was approved and it has seen nothing new to suggest that its poses “an unacceptable risk to the health of bees”. Has anyone read the Buglife report?

Perhaps Hilary Benn should have a chat with his Italian counterpart. Agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, has decided to keep the suspension of neonics for maize seed dressing in force until 2010 because he says there seems to be a correlation between their use and the depopulation of bee hives.

Sarah Brown, the PM’s wife, has wadded into the debate, bringing together beekeepers, campaigners, the Co-op and reseachers together for a secret meeting at Number 10 last month. Were the pesticide companies there?

One of the problems with getting these pesticides suspended in the UK, could be the stance taken by the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) which continues to endorse some of the chemical companies’ products as bee-friendly (not neonics, I must point out) and to receive money in return for educational purposes. It says it is better to have dialogue with these companies. Many of its members disagree.

The issue was raised at the official UK premiere of The Vanishing of the Bees film on Thursday night. The film showed French and German beekeepers taking direct action against pesticide manufactures and regional government for its stance on pesticides. This was in stark contrast to our polite placard-waving apiarists calling  for research money.

The film is a polemic that points blame at the neonics. US commercial beekeeper, Dave Hackenberg, who is credited with discovering Colony Collapse Disorder and features heavily in the film and our book, was flown in to answer questions. The man who has doggedly pursued the pesticide line when most scientists were obsessed with finding a new viruses firmly backed the film’s conclusion.

But let’s not forgotten that Dave’s type of beekeeping : thrucking bees thousands of miles a year, feeding them corn syrup solution and egg protein (because you’ve taken away all their honey, located the hives where there’s no natural food, and want them to work harder), and replacing the queen every six months just isn’t sustainable. It may be necessary to produce cheap food. But the bees are telling us at what cost.

The solution - replace intensive farming with a more sustainable way of producing which I’m afraid we’ll have to pay more for it.

Just seen a film that’s out next month in the UK, called the Vanishing of the Bees. It covers much of the same ground as A World without Bees, interviewing many of the same experts and beekeepers, but where I thought it did really well was following two US beekeepers who visit France to learn from their French counterparts about how they took on  the pesticide companies and won a decade earlier. There’s a great shot of beekeepers lobbing their empty hives over the gates of chemical giant Bayer and hanging an effigy of a beekeeper from a tree, and some good footage from Germany as well of Bavarian beekeepers placing beehives outside government buildings. British beekeepers marching on parliament with their smokers wasn’t so impressive.

It was nice to see Michelle Obama in the White House garden with the beehive near the end of the film when it was showing us what we could do to try and save the bees. But it made me angry that so little progress has actually been made on this front. Bayer and the other pesticide manufactures are still getting away in most countries with peddling their potentially lethal bee wares because no money has gone into tests proving their chemicals are the crux of the problem.  The £10m donated for pollinator research in the UK is no where near ready to be allocated. The Wellcome Trust and the other funders are still waiting for research proposals. But I’d be very surprised if any of it funds pesticide research. It’s laborious, unsexy work that most scientists don’t seem interested in pursuing. Maybe because lots of them are already, in one way or another,  funded by the chemical corporations?

Saw the film at Pestival, the arts event at the South Bank Centre in London this weekend in celebration of the insect. I was tweeting at a mass online honeybee colony role play at Tweehive. I was playing Queen Bee. It wasn’t very busy. My colony wasn’t 50,000-strong, more like a dwindling hive. But met some great people who are also trying things to help save the bees - bumblebees, as well as honeybees.

Myself and c0-author Brian McCallum are stepping up our effort to encourage urban beekeeping. We’ve made a film showing how easy it is, which is being screened in the Pestival bee cab, and we’re running more courses. We’re also planning to sell more honey to raise awareness about how delicious London honey tastes.

I can’t believe how interest in honeybees just keeps growing and growing.

Today I met up with an aspiring playwright who by chance bought the eye-catching paperback at the airport and is now penning a drama based around colony collapse disorder. Before she arrived for lunch, I read an article in the Independent on Sunday about the craze in beekeeping. For all you people who never thought wearing a beesuit remotely sexy, Scarlett Johansson, who apparently received a beehive as wedding present from Samuel L Jackson, may just change your mind.

How long before the WI bring out a honeybee calendar? I’ve just read a three-page spread in the July/August edition of the Women’s Institute magazine, WI Life, about the perilous predicament of British bees. This follows the 300,000-strong member organisation passing a resolution at this year’s AGM to save honeybees with a wealth of information on its website about just how to do this. The feature itself is not yet downloadable, but Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) is reported as saying that “pesticide-specific bee deaths in Britain have become practically nil, due to increased awareness and restrictions”. He chose his words carefully because the truth is the pesticides could well be playing a role in bee deaths in the UK, and the BBKA receives money from one of the main manufacturers of pesticides that have been implicated in bee deaths worldwide. It endorses some of Bayer Crop Sciences products as “bee-friendly despite many of its members campaigning against the link-up.

The article has reminded me to check what’s happened to the £150,000 donated by the Co-op - as part of its Plan Bee campaign -  aside from giving a small amount to map our native black honeybees. And where has Rowse Honey’s £100,000 for bee research gone? Both companies are deeply concerned about pesticide use, but I understand not much research is being done in this area, other than by the chemical companies themselves.

An influential committee of MPs this week said the government must fund more research into the “alarming decline” of honeybees.The call follows the setting up of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Honeybees, which is a group of MPs across the political divide (led by beekeeping MP John Penrose) who are going to monitor pollinator research in the UK and make sure the honeybee is getting her fair share, which should be most of that £10m pledged earlier this year by Defra, the government’s environment department, and other research funding partners.

Finally, the most fun you can have with bees without any chance of getting stung must be tweehive – a new bee forum on Twitter. It’s described as “a Twitter-based mass role play experiment in which you tweet as a bee and can follow the threads [immediate responses] as they come in.”

For Twitter virgins like myself, the official launch on Tuesday to which I was invited and taught how to contribute to (tweet) by my patient tweacher, was a revelation. Suddenly I could put out information about the latest bee article to other tweeters, on the tweehive thread  - or correct something they had tweeted - just by adding #tweehive to the end of my tweets.

My tweacher was pretending to be a drone writing love poetry to the queen, while other tweeters were busy worker bees, cleaning, fanning and foraging. His literary aspirations were not in vain because  tweehive was conceived as part of Pestival – an arts festival at the South Bank Centre 4-6 September in celebration of insects - where the Queen Elizabeth Hall is being transformed into Queen Bee Hall. Sounds fab, see you there…

Colony collapse disorder doesn’t look so bad this year according to preliminary results from the Apiary Inspectors of America’s annual survey of honeybee colony losses in the US.

Around 29% were wiped out this year, compared to 36% over the winter of 2007/08 and 32% the previous winter.

The study between September 2008 and early April 2009 of a fifth of the country’s estimated 2.3m colonies found that only 15% of all the colonies lost during the 2008/09 winter died with symptoms of CCD (no dead bees in the hive). This compares to a 60% that had CCD-like symptoms the winter before.

But before we crack open the champagne, or more appropriately the mead, the study found that while CCD may be on the wane, losses from other causes are still a significant concern with 58% of all beekeepers reporting above normal losses, with a third of their colonies dying.

The researchers say that the findings emphasise the urgent need for more research, not only of CCD, but of general honeybee health.

Jeff Pettis, co-ordinator of the US Department of Agriculture’s five year programme on honeybee health said: “While the drop in losses is encouraging losses of this magnitude are economically unsustainable for commercial beekeeping.”

A complete analysis of the survey data will be published later this year.

The survey results follow a report in the Economist of a supposed glut of bees in California this spring which raised questions about whether a global pollination crisis was real.

But when we tracked down Dave Hackenberg in Central Valley in March for the almond pollination he told us that he thought he’d lost another two thirds of his hives for the third year running.

“Those that didn’t chase [pollinate] pumpkins and apples are looking good, but the others….”

He said the reason that some beekeepers had done better this year was that they had spent a fortune feeding their bees lots of expensive supplements. He said they’d been able to afford to do this because of the high rental prices they’d received for bee hives in California in 2008. But that won’t last. Almond growers are now being forced to cut their acereage because of severe water shortages and prices for hive rentals could drop by as much as a third next spring.

If this happens, he warns beekeepers won’t be able to afford to feed their bees all the supplements they enjoyed this year so we could see another rise in mortality rates.

On a positive note, the plight of the honeybee is now firmly planted in the UK’s consciousness. Not only do listeners of Radio 4 keep abreast of issues at Ambridge with resident beekeeper, Jennifer Archer, but the Women’s Institute, that other bastion of middle England, has taken up the cause of the beleaguered honeybee voting last week to save the honeybee.

The WI’s 200,000 members plan to take direct action by working with local farmers to press for a good mix of pollen-rich flowers around fields, get their local council to use bee-friendly flowers in public spaces, and turn their own gardens into havens for pollen-hungry bees.

Also last week, Jordans – the cereal company – launched the Big Buzz. It will give away thousands of bee-friendly lavender and rosemary plants and seeds with on pack promotions, educate children at bee exhibitions, and promoting its Conservation Grade farming scheme (not organic but its farmers do support biodiversity and pollinators).

This all comes on the back of the Co-ops Plan Bee, launched earlier this year, with the fantastic news that the supermarket would prohibit suppliers of its own-brand fruit and veg from using eight of the neonicitinoid pesticides implicated in bees deaths around the world.

We like to think that in some way  A World without Bees has contributed to this groundswell of opinion behind saving our honeybees and other pollinators.  

At the Jordans launch at Kew Gardens, A World without Bees was quoted. The WI refers to it in its resolution briefing. The Co-op’s sustainable people have all read the book. And a presenter on BBC’s Springwatch last week read out a section on air. So the message is getting out there.

And it’s not just the UK that has gone bee mad. We’ve now got bee hives in the White House.

The challenge is how to keep the interest alive – and with it the bees.