The Big Question: Why are honey bees disappearing, and what can be done to save them?

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The Big Question: Why are honey bees disappearing, and what can be done to save them?

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Wednesday, 23 April 2008


Why are we asking this now?
Because yesterday Britain's beekeepers, an eminently peaceful and undemonstrative group of people, felt steamed up enough about the issue to mount a lobby of Parliament, bending the ears of peers and MPs.
What are they lobbying for?
They want the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to carry out an urgent research programme into the diseases that seem increasingly to be threatening honey bees in Britain and in other parts of the world. The beekeepers have costed the programme at £8m over five years. The Food and Farming Minister, Lord Rooker, accepts that bees are facing serious threats. In fact, he himself has warned that honey bees could be wiped out in Britain. But he says that Defra simply doesn't have the cash to fund the research.

Rest of artcle at:

The Big Question: Why are honey bees disappearing, and what can be done to save them? - Nature, Environment - The Independent

 

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Re: The Big Question: Why are honey bees disappearing, and what can be done to save t

The most obvious answer is the environment/climate has changed so that their lives cannot be sustained as they once were. Whether or not that is reversible is the big question. I'd like to say that nature can be restored, but I doubt mankind has the patience or willingness to do it on a mass scale.