Bee Aware!

I briefly mentioned in my last post that there has been a recent degradation of pollination services, which has severe consequences for agriculture in the future.  Bees are the greatest pollinating machines in agriculture, and without our little bumbling friends plants would be unable to reproduce and crop-bearing plants would not be sufficiently fertilised. Resulting from their pollination of 70% of the 90% of crops that the world population relies on for food, the commercial value of pollination services provided by bees has been estimated at as much as $153bn worldwide every year. In the UK alone, Friends of the Earth have estimated that bees are worth £510 million a year to the UK economy.

Bees are the ideal pollinator, with 'flower fidelity' making them incredibly efficient (Source: pdphoto.org)

Some of us may think that a decline in bees could be a blessing – we all know that anything that can sting isn’t welcome at a picnic – but the scientific and agricultural communities are expressing real concern over recent declines, with the 4 million colonies in the USA of the 1970s dropping to around 2.5 million today. Colony losses in Europe could have reached up to 35% between 2002 and 2010.

So, what’s caused this worrying decline?

Well, here lies another big issue…nobody really knows! The scientific community is yet to agree on a single coherent theory explaining current bee population trends, and this makes combatting the issue much more challenging. Agricultural intensification has been identified as a key cause of bee declines globally, and it is hard to argue against this being at the very least a significant contributing factor. Pesticides are toxic by design, leaving bees more vulnerable to disease and poor nutrition. Greenpeace have their own strong opinions, but not everyone shares such aggressive views against intensive farming. The National Farmers Union argues that the blame attributed to farmers and pesticide overuse is an unfair attack on the industry, failing to consider the good work farmers do to increase farmland biodiversity.

I am inclined to agree with Dr Chris Hartfield  – a leading NFU scientist on bee health – and say that this is a “multi-factorial” issue. A combination of habitat loss, pesticide use, fungal diseases, and mite infestations has contributed to such widespread losses. Moreover, climate change should be considered as a factor, as harsher winters and wetter springs in Europe reduce winter survival rates and suppress re-emergence in the spring.

Worker bees and honeycomb (Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com)

What can we do?

Agriculture has a key role to play in helping to reverse recent declines in bee populations. Measures taken to promote biodiversity on farmland and increase landscape diversity could provide new habitats for bee populations, and a conscious effort to avoid excessive chemical use could go some way to aiding bee recovery. We, the general public, can drive this process through increased consumer demand for ecological and organic farming products. So if we all start buying organic then maybe we can keep the world buzzing.