Bee Fayre
We are a company dedicated to the protection, care and and ultimate survival of the western honeybee (Apis mellifera)
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The Bee Plight
“If the bee disappeared from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years of life left”. This quote concerning the decline in the population of honeybees is attributed to Albert Einstein.
Although it is implied that he said this, it was however adopted by a French marketing company trying to get a systemic pesticide banned from their country and they ultimately did.
The fragility and vulnerability of our bee populations and the potential impact of their extinction environmentally on our world is captured by renowned Oxford University Entomologist George McGavin : “Without bees we would have no flowering plants, no vegetables, no fruit”.
The earliest record of humans’ use of honey is depicted on petroglyphs dating back 10,000 years, in a cave in Valencia, Spain although the Egyptians were the first beekeepers 2400bc.
The honeybee has been around for thirty million years.
Lord Rooker (Minister for Agriculture and Farming House of Lords) “believes our bees could be extinct within 10 years.”
It is widely accepted that human beings would have about four years of life left after that.
Nothing would be pollinated (except for a few wind blown pollinated crops). Honeybees are our master pollinators and pollinate the majority of our plants and fruits, producing nearly one third of all human food. Bees pollinate 80% of the food grown in the UK.
Bees are perfectly engineered to perform these tasks with a body designed to trap pollen and they all have an incredible work ethic, each bee working selflessly and altruistically for the good of the hive.
Without the honeybee the structure, vitality and colour of earth would be lost forever. We would lose our flowers, soil and life. We have the scientists and the knowledge – but there is not as yet a unified national association of beekeepers. Defra is now considering addressing this. For years Britain led the way in bee research. Our bees need our immediate support and the Government needs to fund more research now otherwise it will be too late for all of us.
Bees prefer blue and violet flowers – the evolutionary explanation of this is that these colours offer high nectar rewards; therefore bees’ associate colours with nutritional desirability.
Bee society represents the zenith of the feminine potency in nature, since nearly all the bees in a hive are female save a very few male drones.
An environmental toxic soup surrounds the crisis of the Honeybee. Honeybees face growing number of threats from pests and diseases, all of which lead to dysfunctional immune systems within the hives. Pollution, agrochemicals (particularly systemic pesticides), bad management, monocultures and climate change also contribute to their problems.
The Varroa mite has diminished populations here in the UK. The varroa mite does not kill the hive but impacts on reducing the immunity of the hive; pathogens then attack the bees and kill them.
Beekeepers have lost bees to a mystery syndrome called colony collapse disease (CCD) first recorded in 2007, where disorientated bees fly out of the hive and do not return.
First recorded in the US large numbers of colonies have been wiped out in Canada, Europe, Asia and South America.
Beekeepers think it will inevitably spread to Britain. The National Bee Centre in York has now started a research programme.
Bee populations have diminished here before, 90% of the honeybees disappeared on the Isle of Wight between 1905 and 1919.
Bees have a sophisticated navigation system, using the sun and landmarks as points of reference, which allows them to search for food within a 3-mile radius of the hive. They are able to direct other bees to food supplies through an incredible form of communication called the “waggle dance”. Karl von Frisch documented this theory in the 1940’s as it suggested symbolic communication in a non-human species.
Bees have 2 pairs of eyes and a sense of smell 100 times stronger than our own and they can smell independently with each antenna.
It’s the honeybees’ social behaviour more than its ecological role that has fascinated and transfixed our species. Hive society has long been admired for its feudal hierarchy, total monarchy, republicanism, capitalist industry and socialist aspirations. The ancient civilisations of Greece, Egypt and Rome all revered and acknowledged the significance of the honeybee.
The Media is slowly starting to grasp the inclinations of this problem and its potential significance. Its high time we all gave more attention to our much-maligned golden allies.
