Bee Aware

Went with M to see a film, "More Than Honey" this afternoon, an award-winning documentary about the plight of bees in our world today, and what it means for us. It is scary!

Some facts about bees in the UK:
- as well as honey bees, there are 254 species of wild bees in this country
- managed honey bee colonies fell by 53% between 1985 and 2005
- three bumblebee species have become extinct
- wild honey bees are nearly extinct in many parts of the UK
- solitary bees have declined in 52% of the areas studied

The problem with all this, of course, is that a huge amount of our food depends on bees to pollinate it - they reckon it would cost UK farmers £1.8 billion a year to pollinate our crops without bees.

We had a project with so called "killer bees" where we lived in Brazil - they do seem to be the one sort of bee which is surviving the terrible way we treat bees.

So admire blippers who approach strangers to ask for photos - I had enough qualms asking these two from Friends of the Earth if I could put their photo on Blip, but they were very willing. (That is the place to look if you want to know what you could do to help - lots of easy ideas!)

Now off to do Sutton Pastors - hope we survive the cold...