During the last two months much has happened on the honeybee front. Apart from giving more talks about A World Without Bees at our local Waterstone’s in Clapham Junction and the Slow Food Festival at the South Bank, which had a day dedicated to bees, we have appeared on Newsnight (unfortunately no mention was made of the book), Sky News and UKTV’s Market Garden (again no mention of the book although that’s why we agreed to be interviewed, bloody journalists) talking about urban beekeeping.
More interestingly there have been several developments in honeybee deaths. First we had the news from a survey of British beekeepers that a third of honeybees in the UK had not made it through the winter and spring. As a result the honey association warned that English honey would run out by Christmas and no more would be available until summer 2009. It blamed the shortage on fewer honeybees and farmers devoting more fields to wheat, instead of borage. Although 90% of our honey comes from overseas, the UK’s leading honey company was so concerned by the crisis that it pledged from September, that for each jar of Rowse English honey sold in supermarkets 10p would be donated to a fund dedicated to improving the health of the nation’s honeybees. The story was picked up by many newspapers, podcasts and blogs.
At a meeting of the National Farmers’ Union, Bee Farmers Association and British Beekeepers Association, Rowse agreed to donated £100,000 to bee research. It has also devised teaching materials to use in the classroom to raise awareness about honeybees.
But more importantly, last month Italy followed the lead of France, Germany and Slovenia in banning certain pesticides that are implicated in honeybees deaths. The Ministero del Lavoro della Salute e delle Politiche Sociali issued an immediate suspension of the seed treatment products clothianidin, imidacloprid, fipronil and thiamethoxam used in rapeseed oil, sunflowers and sweetcorn. The Italian government will start a monitoring programme to further investigate the reasons of recent bee deaths. We’ll be keeping a close eye on its findings.
And in this country the Soil Associaton wrote last week wrote to the environment secretary urging him to ban the pesticides in the UK.
Meanwhile, the German Coalition against Bayer Dangers has brought a charge against Werner Wenning, chairman of the Bayer Board of Management, with the Public Prosecutor in Freiburg (south-western Germany). The group accuses Bayer of marketing dangerous pesticides and thereby accepting the mass death of bees all over the world. The Coalition introduced the charge in cooperation with German beekeepers who lost thousands of hives after poisoning by the pesticide clothianidin in May this year. The pressure group suspects that Bayer submitted flawed studies to play down the risks of pesticide residues in treated plants. It says the accusation of flawed studies is confirmed by the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) which judged on Bayer´s Clothianidin application: “All of the field/semi-field studies, however, were found to be deficient in design and conduct of the studies and were, therefore, considered as supplemental information only. Clothianidin may pose a risk to honey bees and other pollinators, if exposure occurs via pollen and nectar of crop plants grown from treated seeds”. PRMA adds: “It should also be noted that Clothianidin is very persistent in soil, with high carry-over of residues to the next growing season. Clothianidin is also mobile in soil.”
In the US, the National Resources Defense Council has filed a lawsuit against the federal Environmental Protection Agency for withholding information about the risks that honeybees face from systemic neonicotinoid pesticides.
Finally, on the research front trails are due to start this month in the States on an anti-viral agent developed by Israeli-US company, Beeologics that if successful could prevent Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, which is implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder. Plant virologist Professor Ilan Sela who identifed IAPV in 2004 at the Hebrew University in Jersusalem, is Beeologics’ chief scientist.
In the second paragraph you wrote:
‘As a result the honey association warned that English honey would run out by Christmas and no more would be available until summer 2009. It blamed the shortage on fewer honeybees and farmers devoting more fields to wheat, instead of borage.’
I have been supporting local beekeepers by purchasing their products at a monthly Farmer’s Market and having an interest in ecology I have engaged in conversation and loaned them a copy of Schacker’s ‘A Spring Without Bees’ and am about to do raise awareness of your ‘A World Without Bees’.
Last month I was told by one keeper that he had lost eighty percent of his bees over the 2008-2009 winter and has put this down to too much foraging on borage - which was a new development.
We really love reading your posts, i just used this website Swap my Seeds, as a way of giving away my unused seeds. Anyone know what I can sell them for? I have maybe 150 begonia seeds left.