More funding earmarked to combat British bee devastation

The British government will provide more money for research into bee diseases, in a belated effort to tackle alarming falls in their populations, the BBC reported this week.

A senior civil servant admitted that that issue hadn’t been given the priority it should have had, but now there would be a “significant extra boost” of cash in a bid to save the insects that play a pivotal part in the agricultural economy.

“In a sense I am admitting we had not given this the high priority we should have done,” Dame Helen Ghosh of the environment food and rural affairs department (Defra) told a parliamentary committee.

Now the government will provide 500,000 pounds ($724,000) a year extra for research, husbandry and disease control, according to the BBC.

This comes after a long running debate into declining bee populations in Britain where it is feared that disease could eventually wipe out the industrious insects.

Bees help to pollinate 39 commercial crops in Britain and are worth an estimated 200 million pounds ($290 million) a year to the economy, according to Labour MP Don Touhig.

More than a year earlier Environment and rural affairs minister Lord Rooker had warned, “bee health is at risk and frankly, if nothing is done about it, the fact is the honey bee population could be wiped out in 10 years.”

There are a number of different disease threats to the bee population of the island nation, but the one that stands out is the varroa mite that arrived in the UK in 1992, according to the BBC.

The tiny parasite that latches onto bees and sucks their “blood” had nearly wiped out the wild honeybee population and was eating into the managed hives.

Across the Atlantic in the United States, a mysterious phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder has killed off about a third of commercial hives in the past two years, Ron Spears, a Californian beekeeper was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

The fear in Britain is that this little-understood blight that causes whole hives to be left deserted may traverse the ocean.

“If it did arrive we don’t know how to tackle it,” Ivor Davis an amateur beekeeper told the BBC.

Some have blamed Britain’s thousands of amateur enthusiasts for making it difficult to control diseases in bee populations.

An army of 20,000 hobby-keepers are threatening the survival of the honeybees, The Times reported in early March.

The newspaper cited a National Audit Office (NAO) report that recommends all amateur beekeepers join a national register to make it easer to train beekeepers to spot parasites and prevent viral outbreaks.

About 30 percent of colonies were devastated during the 2007-08 winter, according to The Times.

However, journalist and amateur beekeeper Alison Benjamin hit back at accusers and called for more funding for research.

“All the beekeepers I’ve met since taking up this hobby three years ago care deeply about their bees,” she wrote in the Guardian newspaper.

“Why would they fail to take precautionary measures against the bees’ assailant?”
She says that most beekeepers are well aware of parasites such as the varroa mite.

“You can spot the tiny brown dot on the bees, or more easily on the white larvae. Feeding your bees a natural jelly-like substance made from thymol in the autumn is the best protection.”

It doesn’t make sense to attack the people who have an interest in keeping bees alive, Benjamin points out.

“The truth is the jury’s still out on what is killing our bees. What about the role of pesticides? The European parliament and the Co-op supermarket think there is enough of a case against bee-toxic chemicals to ban some of them. What we need is more funding for research in this area.”