Bee Population

Lord Rea Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rea]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, very much for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue again, and for the very clear way in which he presented the wide extent of the problem. He emphasised the importance of honey bees as pollinators, as will all speakers, but, of course, several other wild insect species are also pollinators, and there is evidence that some of these, such as bumblebees and butterflies, are also in decline. The topic has been raised on a number of occasions over the past few years in both Houses, most recently in a series of Questions for Written Answer by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and answered in fact by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, perhaps in a warm-up exchange for this debate.

I am no expert on apiculture but I have chosen to join this debate since I have had personal experience of keeping bees—admittedly in a very amateur and unregistered capacity—for a number of years. I confess that I have never been on a formal training course in bee husbandry and have learnt what I know from talking to other beekeepers and through reading around the subject. But most of all I have learnt from experience through trial and error. Over the years I have lost several colonies which failed to survive the lean winter months. This was due to various identifiable causes, such as raiding of the hive by mice and even by woodpeckers, harvesting honey too late in the season for the bees to collect winter stores, not feeding the colony with enough sugar, and other errors that could be attributed to incompetence or inexperience.

However, I have always managed to keep the hives free from varroa and, as far as I am aware, other infestations, although wax moths have sometimes been a nuisance. In good years I have collected, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, about 30 pounds of honey per hive, which is a good yield that is enough to keep family and friends in honey for a year or so. I keep only one or two hives. In the past three years, though, I have lost two colonies for no explicable reason. There were more than adequate winter stores of honey but the bees did not use them. In one case the colony simply died and in the other the surviving bees in March or April appeared disoriented and unable to forage. The old queen had died but the colony had not replaced her, as would normally be the case, and it soon dwindled in strength and numbers and perished. Perhaps an expert would have spotted this early enough to requeen the colony but it was too late in my case.

This unusual behaviour alerted me further to reports, which I was already aware of, describing how low-dose, sub-lethal amounts of certain pesticides—especially the systemic neonicotinoids—have been shown experimentally to result in damage to bees’ central nervous system, with subsequent aberrant behaviour. For instance, in one study affected bees appeared to become disoriented and a higher proportion than usual, as the noble Baroness said, failed to find their way back to the hive from foraging flights, due possibly to memory failure or loss of communication skills. It has also been shown recently in several studies that neonicotinoids can increase the severity of infections—for example, from the common fungal infection of bees, Nosema apis. A study of bumblebees given low doses of a neonicotinoid showed that the number of new queens produced fell markedly compared with control colonies. These findings seemed to me to be quite relevant to the fate of the two lost colonies that I described. The loss of bee colonies may not be due to the direct lethal effect of the high doses of pesticide on bees; rather, it may be due to the reduced resistance to other pathogens and maladaptive behaviour caused by quite small doses.

There is a recent report from the policy department of the European Parliament, published last month. I am not sure whether this is the document circulated by the noble Lord, but I am afraid that I did not receive it anyhow. It is entitled Existing Scientific Evidence of the Effects of Neonicotinoid Pesticides on Bees and it gives a very up-to-date picture of current research. It has 48 references to scientific papers, mostly published between 2009 and 2012. These describe the evidence on which the descriptions of the effects on bees, including bumblebees, of low doses of what I am going to call “NNs” are based. I have described these effects. The case seems to be clear that the use of these chemicals should be reduced and/or further controlled. Those that are shown to be most damaging should be banned. There is enough evidence, I feel.

This is already the case in Italy, where bee health was seen to recover after the use of some NNs was forbidden, and also in certain German Länder, and in France and other countries. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, can fill us in on the whole international picture. In the UK, Defra has until very recently taken a very cautious position on the effect of NNs, as has the British Beekeepers Association. Many of us wonder how much influence the agrochemical and farming industries are having on the Government’s position. The use of pesticides can certainly increase crop yields, so I can understand that evidence of the damage that they also cause to pollinators needs to be robust. However, I hope that the Minister will now recognise that the scientific case for action is becoming stronger all the time.

As other speakers have pointed out, not only are beekeepers losing their livelihood but the health of our horticulture and natural environment are at stake through the loss of pollinators. There are reports that insectivorous bird numbers are diminishing in some areas because of the decreased numbers of insects due to agricultural pesticides. It is not yet Silent Spring in the UK but there is a strong case for tighter regulation of pesticides and increased research to develop new, less harmful ways of obtaining good crop yields. This could be done through plant breeding, for example, and—dare I mention it?—genetic modification, and the development of plant-pest predators so that harmful pesticides can be phased out. However, I am of course aware of the useful nostrum, “For every complex problem there is a simple solution and it is wrong”. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that many factors may be responsible.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister whether he agrees with one of the recommendations of the report from the European Parliament which I mentioned that, as long as there are uncertainties concerning the effects of neonicotinoids on honey bees, the precautionary principle in accordance with the EC Regulation 1107/2009 should be applied when using neonicotinoids.