Are bees getting their heads blown off?

Researching and interviewing for this website have enlightened me on many things (before I began looking into bee disappearance I had decided it was down to mobile phone masts!). Most notably, I have been enlightened on how little I knew about bees and how little I still know in comparison to the many informed and intelligent people I met or spoke with on the telephone during this project.

For what my opinion is worth, I go for the ‘multi-factor’ option. Although this seems like I am sitting on the fence, I beg to differ.

You see, some bee scientists in the UK will call honey bee problems ‘multi-factor’, but state that at the centre of it all is Varroa. Now, while I am not denying Varroa as a significant cause of our disappearing hives in Britain, I think that it would be foolish to rule pesticides out completely, which some people seem to be doing. They are chemicals designed to kill creatures not too much smaller than honeybees.

No, of course honey bees are not the intended target, but then, if you fire a machine gun in a room full of people (Disclaimer: I do not suggest that you do this) you may well hit your target, but a lot of other people are going to get their heads blown off too.

Too graphic/ridiculous an illustration? Ok then, how about this: an aphid can grow up to about a third of the size of a honeybee. Would a poison designed to kill a dog not have a similar or at least harmful effect on a human too?

There has been nowhere near enough research into sub-lethal levels of pesticides present in honey bees in the UK. In Europe, French farmers continue to rally against Bayer CropScience and its neonic pesticides. Germany has banned some of Bayer’s products after they were misapplied and killed thousands of bees. Here in Britain, the British Beekeepers Association endorses one of Bayer’s pesticides.

When I spoke to Julian Little at Bayer CropScience, he was genuinely concerned for bees and their keepers. I do believe that Bayer put a lot of research into making their pesticides as non-harmful to bees as possible. But at the end of the day, as Dr Little said himself, you can’t call these products safe, you can just try to prove that they are not unsafe. Is that a good enough reason to keep using these “not unsafe” products, or should we wait until we know for certain that bees aren’t losing their buzz because of pesticides?

It bears reiterating to you what I wrote at the top of this page: what do I know? I hope you can read the articles, listen to the interviews and watch the videos on at Bees on their knees? and reach your own conclusions.

And perhaps all this science is just a smokescreen for what’s really happening. Maybe it really is the bee rapture after all. I suppose you can’t have the land of milk and honey without bees; perhaps God is just getting things ready…?