Supporting honey bees

The news about honey bees is not great with as many as one in three colonies failing last year in the UK, and widespread colony collapses in the US. Now that more people growing their own veg and keeping chickens, there is greater interest in bee keeping. The National Bee Keeping Association reports a marked increase in new members and enquiries. Hopefully this will lead to more bee keepers and more honey bees.

So what can you do to help bees?
1. Become a bee keeper
2. Plant bee friendly plants such as foxgloves, hollyhocks, mint, sunflower, alliums
3. If you don't want ot keep bees, but have a bee-friendly garden or rooftop, offer space to a local bee keeper, in exchange for some honey!
4. If you see a swarm contact a local bee keeper
5. Support bee charities.
6. Sign the Soil Association petition to ban pesticides known to harm honey bees

What is Ecoscene doing? For every honey bee image sold during the month of August we will donate £10 to Bees Abroad. This charity works with communities in developing countries, helping them to establish bee hives. www.beesabroad.org.uk. The sale of honey from one hive raises enough money to put one child through their primary education while a donation of £15 buys the materials to make one hive.

Did you know there are more than 300 different species of bee in the UK including honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees?

Ecoscene has photofeatures available on the honey bee plus a supper collection of images on bee keeping, bees in flight and life cycle of the honey bee. www.ecoscene2.captureweb.co.uk/lbshow.php?lightboxid=387429465654

Organic food is no better for you

As the owner of an organic farm (www.empirefarm.co.uk), I was very disappointed to read the findings of the Food Standards Agency's Organic Review. The research was carried out by a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who examined all the evidence on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years. The Soil Association in their response to the report could not understand why the research team decided to ignore virtually all of the existing comparative studies between organic and non organic foods. The reason given being that the studies did not met their criteria? In those studies where they did find differences, the research team felt that they were not important. For example, the researchers found that there was 50% more beta-carotene, 38% more flavonoids, and 11 % more zinc in organic food but decided it was not significant. They admitted that there were higher levels of the benficial polyunstaurated fatty acids in meat and dairy but again it was not considered beneficial to health. Bizarrely the study also ignored the results of a major multi-million pound study by 31 European research institutes that was published in April. This European Union research programme concluded that:

• Levels of a range of nutritionally desirable compounds such as antioxidants, vitamins, glycosinolates were shown to be higher in organic crops
• Levels of nutritionally undesirable compounds such as mycotoxins, glycoalkaloids, Cadmium and Nickel were shown to be lower in organic crops'.
• The levels of fatty acids, such as CLA and omega 3 were between 10 - 60% higher in organic milk and dairy products, and levels of Vitamin C were up to 90% higher in leafy vegetables and fruits.
  

Another area ignored by the FSA study was the long term effects of pesticides on our health. A study pubished in 2006 concluded that the long tem exposure to pesticides can disrupt the immune systme, cause sexual disordered, and damage the nervous system and DNA.

So I'm not really clear why the FSA should fund such a poorly researched report unless of cause they are out to discredit organic food. I, for one, know that I do not want to eat food that has been sprayed with pesticides and fertilisers, often several times in a growing season.

Buzz buzz - save the honey bee

Honey bees have a vital role in pollinating many of the country's crops but they are disappearing rapidly. Over the last two years there has been a massive decline in honey numbers and as many as one in three hives failed, but the Government seems to have little interest in this problem, despite the fact that the value of bees has been estimated at £200 million a year. This problem was highlighted recently by members of the all-party House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, who said that money for research into bee health should be ring-fenced rather than put in a general pot for research into pollinating insects. They want DEFRA to take more action, such as asking bee-keepers to register so that inspections can be made, which would give a much better picture of the health of the nation's honey bees.

Edward Leigh, chairman of the committee said "Honeybees are dying and colonies are being lost at an alarming rate. This is very worrying, and not just because the pollination of crops by honeybees is worth an estimated £200m each year to the British economy. So it is difficult to understand why Defra has taken so little interest in the problem up to now. Additional money for research into honeybee health has been announced, but the focus will include all pollinating insects," He went on to add, "We need to know what proportion of the funding is to be ring-fenced specifically for research into the causes of the decline in honeybee numbers."

One possible cause of the rapid rise in hive death (often called colony collapse disorder or CCD) is the use of a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids. These were first used in the mid 1990s, a period that coincided with the first observations of mass bee deaths. These chemicals block specific nerve pathways in the central nervous system of the insect. In bees, they interfere with communication, foraging, orientation and flight. Other countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia, have banned them but they are still legal in the UK.

The Soil Association is so concerned about these chemicals that it has started a petition calling on Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs to ban neonicitinoid pesticides with immediate effect. Sign the petition today: www.soilassociation.org/bees.aspx

There is a lightbox of images at this url : http://www.ecoscene2.captureweb.co.uk/lbshow.php?lightboxid=387429465654

Ecoscene can privide photo features on the honey bee and other related stories.