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Over the past few years I have heard about the impending crash of the world bee population, of the mysterious disappearance/death of bees around the world (especially in the US) and increasingly in the UK too.  It is all very worrying, yet so many people who should be concerned about this, are not.

Will this be another case of too little, too late?

Honeybees may be wiped out in 10 years
By Jasper Copping

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 20/01/2008


Honeybees will die out in Britain within a decade as virulent diseases and parasites spread through the nation's hives, experts have warned.

Whole colonies of bees are already being wiped out, with current methods of pest control unable to stop the problem.

   
Disease is killing off Britain’s honeybees

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) said that if the crisis continued, honeybees would disappear completely from Britain by 2018, causing "calamitous" economic and environmental problems.

It called on the Government to restart shelved research programmes and to fund new ones to try to save the insects.

Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The situation has become insupportable and the Government is unwilling to take steps to avoid disaster.

"We're increasingly unable to cope with threats as they arise. No bees means a huge cost to agriculture, without touching on the ecological and environmental issues. We're facing calamitous results."

Last year, more than 11 per cent of all beehives inspected were wiped out, although losses were higher in some areas.

In London, about 4,000 hives - two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital - were estimated to have died over last winter. Of the eight colonies inspected so far this year, all have been wiped out.

advertisementThe losses are being blamed on Colony Collapse Disorder, a disease that has severely affected bee populations in America and Europe, and a resistant form of Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that affects bees.

The decline in honeybees is risking the sustainability of home-grown food. They pollinate more than 90 of the flowering crops we rely on for food. They are estimated to contribute more than £1 billion a year to the national economy yet the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), spends an average of only £200,000 a year on research to protect them.

The BBKA will this week launch a campaign aimed at forcing ministers to take the plight of the bee more seriously, and to spend the £8 million over the next five years which it believes is essential to guarantee its survival.

At their annual meeting held earlier this month, the association's 11,200 members voted unanimously to condemn the Government's position.

At a showdown meeting, between Lord Rooker, the farming minister, and the BBKA last month, the minister refused to increase the spending, even though in November, he appeared to admit the severity of the threat, when he said: "If we do not do anything, the chances are that in 10 years' time we will not have any honeybees."

Mr Lovett added: "Defra has been alerted, but chooses to take no action. If nothing happens, we may not even have to wait 10 years."

Professor Francis Ratniek, a bee expert at Sheffield University, said: "If there was to be a bee collapse the effect on Britain would be huge.

"In Britain we haven't had our fair share of bee research funds and research into bee disease has decreased just as the threat to colonies is increasing. A complete die-off is a worst case scenario."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/20/eabees120.xml

Woe, woe and thrice woe! The reason so many colonies died out last year is nothing to do with CCD, which is purely a US problem. Varroa has developed immunity to the most commonly used miticidem and a great many beekeepers ignored numerous warnings of its spread. They went straight on doing their annual treatment with fluvalinate, with inevitable results. Then people like me, who had taken the appropriate action, got invaded by huge numbers of mites from other people's collapsing colonies, and all the viruses they were distributing. Alert beekeepers will survive. It's perfectly true that governmenrt funding is grossly inadequate. We had the two top experts in bee viruses here, and they were both made redundant due to cuts. Apart from that, it looks like yet another case of a journalist looking for a 'story', and not understanding what they were told.

Dont ya just love a reprieve  ;D

We saw NO honeybees this past summer for the first time but did have bumblebees and plenty of other insects which must have pollinated for us because our home crops were normal.

Beekeepers were hit badly last year, and there are very few feral colonies around. For comparison, before varroa arrived, there were more beekeepers, and probably three colonies out of four were feral. The good news from the States, which has had varroa longer than us, is that feral bees are reappearing in some areas. They will develop resistance, the only question is how long it's going to take. Then there are all the pollutants as well, which have a major impact, but I can't see bees disappearing altogether.

Good grief Robert.
The world can't survive without them.

Between lndustrial farming, industrial beekeeping, and all the other polluting activities we get involved with, we're doing our damndest to get rid of them.