As you can read in My London Diary, I owe my very existence to the honey bee, although the only thing I’ve done to repay my debt to the species is to eat the honey others have stolen from them.
But bees are much more important than just suppliers of honey. Bees play a vital role in the production of fruit and other foods, with around a third of our food supply dependent on their pollination.
The loss of our bees would be a catastrophe, but it seems increasingly a possibility with Varroa mites (which have killed a large propertion of our wild bees) developing resistance to current treatments which have saved those in hives, and the more recent and still unexplained colony collapse disorder which has caused huge losses of bees in the USA and is now in parts of Europe.
Bee-keeping was seen as an important source of home-grown food during the war. Afterwards interest gradually fell away but is now reviving, even in cities, where some people keep bees on rooftops as well as in gardens. The revival is a part of a greater interest in healthy foods and home growing that have seen more turning to allotments too.
Several hundred bee-keepers came to Westminster to lobby MPs for increased funding for research into bee health, and took a petition with over 140,000 signatures to Downing St.
More text and pictures on My London Diary
A nice story about your debt to bees and bee-keeping!
I kept three hives in the centre of Cambridge in the 1970s but gave it up in 1980 when my ever-patient neighbours started to produce babies (nothing to do with the bees…)
Now my one concession to this vital part of the eco-system is that the eponymous weeping ash tree next to our house has housed a colony of wild bees every year since we moved there in 2001. If they should ever disappear, then I’ll know that the end of the world is nigh.
Apologies for the delay to your comment Roy, I’ve been in Paris for a week and avoiding computers.
Wild bees are unfortunately very likely to be killed by the Verroa mite, so yours may not last too long.
I grew up with bees at the bottom of the garden and I don’t think bees were ever a problem when I was out there in my pram.
Just switched on the Today programme this morning to find that they had an item about the bee problem – nice to see I got there a couple of weeks before them!
Peter