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Capital Bee website launched!

Capital Bee promotes community-run beekeeping in London and campaigns for a bee-friendly city. It is part of Capital Growth, the campaign for 2,012 new food growing spaces in London by 2012. We are supported by the Mayor of London and funded by London Food. Visit the site now

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In spring 2009, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced that over the next five years £2 million is to be spent on a research programme on pollinators. In ‘Healthy Bees’,  Defra also set out a detailed list of actions and responsibilities to :

1. keep pests, diseases and other hazards to the lowest levels achievable;
2. promote good standards of husbandry to minimise pest and diseases risks and contribute to sustaining honey bee populations – prevention is better than cure;
3. encourage effective biosecurity to minimise risks from pests, diseases and undesirable species;
4. ensure that sound science underpins bee health policy and its implementation; and
5. get everyone to work together on bee health.

Defra stated that they were aiming to contact as many amateur bee keepers across as possible in a bid to improve statistics on honey bee survival rates.

See: Defra (March 2009) ‘Healthy Bees: Protecting and improving the health of honey bees in England and Wales.

Such funding and research are very welcome. However, there is still cause for concern. The problem is that, after years of under-funding and neglect, it is not yet clear if this will be a classic case of “too little too late”.

The UK’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has already criticised the new funding, saying that “this additional work to support the Department’s new Bee Health Strategy will be diluted by including research into other pollinator insects as well as honey bees”.  In addition, nearly 80% of cases of notifiable disease in
England are identified through official bee inspections. The PAC stated that “The effectiveness of these inspections is hampered because around half of the estimated 37,000 active beekeepers in England have not joined the Department’s voluntary register, BeeBase.” PAC presented a series of recommendations to ramp up government’s work on bee health, including a call for more research funding, payments for farmers taking action to support bee health, and enforcement of compulsory testing for bee disease.

See: House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (14 July 2009) The health of livestock and honeybees in England: Thirty–sixth Report of Session 2008–09.