By John Knox
It’s good to see at least one politician with a Plan B. The Highlands and Islands MSP Rhoda Grant has begun her election campaign with a plea to save the bumblebee.
While others are banging on about the economy, jobs, council cuts, schooling, the health service, the state of the roads and our constitutional future, Mrs Grant appears in the Inverness Courier in a colourful photoshoot helping to launch Bee Aware fortnight in the Highlands.
“Be that as it may,” you say, “but isn’t the plight of the bumblebee one of those nice non-political, motherhood-and-apple-pie issues we can all agree on and don’t really have to do anything about?” Actually, no. It is a classic example of an issue that is apparently a small thing – like the bee itself – but is in fact a large thing which goes to the heart of politics and presents us with some worryingly hard choices.
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Bees pollinate a third of the food we eat. Without bees, there would be no apples, raspberries, blackberries, cabbages, cucumbers, sprouts, even tea. It’s estimated that bee pollination is worth $200 billion to the global economy, £200 million a year to the UK economy and £12 million a year to the Scottish economy. But, more worrying, the decline in bee numbers is a sign of trouble deep down in the environment. Bee numbers have halved in the last 20 years. A fifth of bee colonies did not survive last winter. The reasons are many and complicated. They include bad weather, the loss of flowering meadows, the use of pesticides, the import of non-native species such as the Asian hornet, viruses, fungi, the varroa mite and diseases that affect the larvae such as European and American foulbrood. There are also the more esoteric explanations, such as that the bees’ memories and flight-paths are confused by air pollution and by electromagnetic fields from powerlines, wi-fi and mobile phone signals. And then there is Colony Collapse Disorder, for which there is, as yet, no explanation. The United Nations has just brought out a report, Global Honey Bee Colony Disorders and Other Threats to Insect Pollinators, which paints an apocalyptic picture of food shortages and environmental disaster as 20,000 flowering plant species die out and the world’s population of bees go with them. It warns that large scale bee-farming and globalisation are ideal for spreading bee diseases and it calls for more research to find a scientific way out of our global bee predicament. The UK government says it is playing its part, with £4.2 million being given to bee research over the next five years. The Scottish government has also been wringing its beekeeping gloves and has published The Honey Bee Health Strategy. This, however, does little more than urge Scotland’s 2,500 amateur beekeepers and the 25 commercial beekeeping farms to be on their guard for diseases and adopt “best practice”. But honey bees are only part of the story. There are 20,000 known species of bee, from those which prefer to live in large hives of up to 40,000 other bees, to those which prefer to live in small independent colonies of up to 400, like the bumblebee. Or those which prefer to live alone, like the carpenter bee, the leafcutter bee, the hornfaced bee or the orchard mason bee. All of them face problems living in the 21st century. Ten of Britain’s 24 species of bumblebee are in serious decline. We have lost two species completely in recent years. The great yellow bumblebee is now only found in the north and west of Scotland. There are fears that the black bee of Colonsay may disappear soon. Not if Rhoda Grant can help it. She is urging people across the Highlands and Islands to plant more flowering bushes in their gardens, leave an area of long grass for the bees, stop using pesticides and, in the winter, put out bottle-tops with a one-third sugar/water solution in them for the bees to drink. But it will take more than domestic gardeners to save the bees. Farmers will need to leave more uncut hedgerows and flower meadows, there will need to be a stop to the use of pesticides and we will need to invest in more research to combat imported viruses and diseases. Mrs Grant may be fighting the Highlands and Islands regional seat for the Labour Party and issuing press releases on council cuts, more capital funding for NHS Highland, upgrading the A95 and protecting the Stornoway Black Pudding – but she also has a Plan Bee. Quite how far she is prepared to go, and whether she is prepared to flap her wings on the issue as vigorously as the bees (230 times a second), we have until 5 May to find out.Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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