Bees

All maybe well in the world of bees after all. I’ve been as guilty as anyone this year in milking for all it’s worth the scare about the decline in the bee population as a means of publicising my ‘Bee Keeper’s Garden’ at Hampton Court. The highlight of the campaign was when Professor Ratnieks, Britain’s only Professor of Apiculture was interviewed by Joe Swift in the Bee Keeper’s Garden for BBC 2.

All sorts of pressure groups have jumped on the same band wagon including campaigners against climate change, against agricultural pesticides and against GM Crops. Now, at a conference this week Professor Ratnieks has dismissed the claims of all these groups and has said that the main reason for the decline of bees here is that there are fewer wild flowers. Meanwhile, an article in Current Biology, which has been helpfully made intelligible in The New Scientist shows that the world wide bee population has increased by 45% in the last 5 years. Phew, another crisis over.