Bee Population

Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage a recovery in the population of bees and other pollinators.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking noble Lords who are supporting this debate and I look forward very much to hearing their contributions. In many ways, the debate is a perfect antidote to the divisive EU withdrawal Bill, being on a subject that will affect us and future generations long after the world has forgotten what the initials “EU” even stood for.

I confess that I was generally pretty ignorant about bees and pollinators until around a year ago when a remarkable young woman, Polly Birch, who had such a passionate commitment to spreading the word about their importance, reminded me and many others about just how much we rely on them and how their numbers are in decline. This debate is timely as the Private Member’s Bill tabled by Ben Bradley MP to make provision for the protection of pollinators started its passage through the other place on 8 May.

I have only now discovered that bees are the second most written about species after man. There is even a whole body of law relating to honey bees, most of which has its basis in Roman law. A swarm still belongs to you even when it has left its hive, as long as you can still see it, and allegedly one may trespass on a neighbour’s land in order to retrieve it. Somewhere in my consciousness was the threat repeated last week by David Attenborough that should bees disappear from the face of the earth, man would have only,

“four years left to live”.

The quote is wrongly attributed to Einstein, but it is the sort of thing that he might have said. We probably would not starve because wind is a good pollinator, but there is no doubt that our diet would become very dull and getting our five-a-day would be very tricky.

This Government and the coalition before them have already done a great deal to encourage the habitats of the 1,500 or so species of insect pollinators that we have in this country. Although we may think of bees as the primary pollinators—there are 250 different varieties of them, 35 of which are currently in danger of extinction—we also have hoverflies, butterflies, beetles, moths and even bats. Most of these live in the wild, with the exception of the headline-grabbing honey bee. The NFU estimates the economic value of their pollination services at £690 million per annum but they also support a small but thriving industry of some 250 bee farmers, as well as thousands of amateur beekeepers.

The report also highlighted progress in a number of areas including habitat creation, public engagement and the protection of honey bee health, all as a result of many different sections of the community—not just the bee farming industry and the farming community, but schools, universities, charities such as the National Trust, Buglife, BeeConnected and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, and central and local government—working collaboratively. Productive beehives at Defra’s offices in London and York now produce Defra honey, as do hives on the roofs of Fortnums, Coutts and the Garrick Club.

Funding has also been provided for a range of primary research projects covering everything from genetic sequencing and the taxonomy of insect pollinators to the relationship between pollinators and pollination services in crop production. I know that the Bee Farmers Association hopes that more funds will be directed to the National Bee Unit in the Food and Environment Research Agency once the Green Paper on nature and harmony is published.

Despite all this, bees and a variety of pollinators are in decline. Clearly, much more can be done, not only by government but by us all. Let us stray into the area that is most likely to cause controversy—the use of insecticides—which I am sure will be covered in more depth by my noble friend Lord Ridley. Integrated pest management is central to this Government’s approach. The objective is to reduce the overall use of pesticides by using them in a more targeted way, to reduce resistance, and supplementing them with improved crop husbandry and the use of natural predators.

The EU recently banned the use of neonicotinoids on all field crops, not just those that are attractive to bees, as had been the case since 2013. Neonics are a group of insecticides that have been linked to a sharp reduction in bee numbers. Environmental groups welcomed this move but, interestingly, the Bee Farmers Association was agnostic about the ban. Perhaps we should be cautious. Bees in Australia, a large user of neonics, do not appear to be adversely affected and the research by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre on which this policy was based concluded that the ban may be counterproductive. It has resulted in an increased use of more damaging pesticides, mainly pyrethroids, which are sprayed rather than seed-treated; that is worse for non-pests. The study found that UK farmers have more than quadrupled the number of insecticide applications on oilseed rape but pest pressure has still increased. The JRC report has not been made public and although I urge the Government to ensure that the regulation of pesticides continues after we leave the EU, it needs to be developed on the basis of independent and verifiable scientific research.

An undeniable cause of the declining number of pollinators has been the destruction of their habitat. Over 97% of all flower-rich grasslands have been lost in England since the 1930s, whether through transport, infrastructure, modern farming methods or housebuilding. The habitats that exist have become particularly fragmented; the southern margins of their distribution are shrinking northward, while the northern margins are static. Buglife, a charity that works closely with the Government on strategy, has developed the award-winning concept of “B-Lines”, a series of insect pathways running through our towns and countryside. Along them stretch a series of wildflower-rich stepping stones, linking existing wildlife areas into a network. Much work is being undertaken to identify areas suitable for grassland habitat restoration and creation. The proposed Bill will encourage local authorities to include such considerations in area plans since the creation of a channelled pattern of habitats is the most effective way of promoting species dispersal.

Since there is a need to restore pollinator-friendly habitats, and to establish wildflower recovery areas, this could perhaps link with the aim to replace the countryside stewardship payments from the CAP with a scheme that will incentivise farmers to look after the environment. Perhaps it could also be tailored in such a way that it favours pollinators and the bee farming industry, as is the case already in Germany.

We, the public, whether city or country dwellers, can all play our part by growing a range of bee-friendly plants that will provide pollen and nectar for all pollinators. I suggest that we avoid rhododendron ponticum, whose nectar is toxic to bees, and the silver lime—Tilia tomentosa—which uses caffeine to trick bees into visiting empty flowers, whereupon many die of starvation. Moreover, although farmers and bees alike love oilseed rape, I am told that it is not ideal for honey production.

There is so much to say about bees, and I shall end by sharing what I have learned from noble Lords who have passed by my desk in the Library over the past week or so. Bees measure distance by the way the hairs on their backs flatten as they fly from the hive; they prefer trumpet-shaped flowers; they are colour-specific and will not go from a blue flower to a red one to a yellow, and they dance on the hive to direct their fellows to nectar-rich areas. And my favourite fact: it was one of St David’s missionaries who introduced bees to Ireland in the sixth century.

Lastly, there is also, perhaps, much to be learned from the way bees organise themselves. The cleric and philosopher Samuel Purchas, in his Theatre of Political Flying Insects, written in 1625, observed:

“Bees are political creatures, and destinate all their actions to one common end; they have one common habitation, one common work; all work for all, and one common care … ”.


That is not a bad dictum for this House.

Agriculture, Fisheries and the Rural Environment

Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Lindsay for introducing this wide-ranging debate so expertly, and I wish my noble friend Lord Plumb well in his richly deserved retirement.

We can do so much more than merely take note of the opportunities we have before us; we should embrace them. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, for the first time for decades we have the chance to ask ourselves fundamental questions about what we consider to be the purpose of both the countryside and agriculture—for example, how self-sufficient should we aim to be? How can we leave the land in better condition for the next generation?—and to craft solutions to address those challenges. Objectives can now be set with a more holistic approach to rural communities that go beyond the business of farming. We need to encourage vertical integration of the quality and scale of Robert Wiseman Dairies, Green & Black’s and the Covent Garden Soup Company, which started in a Suffolk farm. Such diversification creates rural employment and adds value in the food chain.

The structure of the CAP has hardly encouraged the industry to improve its productivity and, as we have heard again and again, there are now serious warnings about soil quality, biodiversity and the long-term damage caused by some modern farming methods. Now may be the time to prove the thesis that conventional tillage is destructive. Many believe that “no till” agriculture will help to preserve soil structure, moisture and carbon content while at the same time improving habitats for the worms, insects and other wildlife that they support. We need to keep glyphosates such as Roundup in the mix—a herbicide, incidentally, that the EU may ban despite evidence that it is safe. New methods can hugely lower the costs of cultivation while at the same time allowing the high-yield farming that is essential to raise productivity levels.

Low productivity remains a problem, production costs remain high and large parts of the agricultural workforce remain unskilled. More investment is required in our university sector. Both Sweden and the Netherlands have institutions ranked in the top five globally for excellence in the study of agriculture and forestry. Where are ours? It has been said that forestry and the environment have long been marginalised by the dominant role in rural policy and funding that the CAP gives to farming. Now is the time to redress the balance—public good for public money, and a common countryside policy.

We can do that, as our track record shows. We are already seen to have a global leadership role in ocean conservation, taking long-term decisions such as creating vast marine reserves around some of our overseas territories. If one considers unravelling the common agricultural policy to be challenging, the common fisheries policy is even more so. However, the UK has already taken the lead in reforming the CFP, addressing issues such as maximum sustainable yields and the banning of discards. This has led to a significant improvement in managing that mobile and renewable resource sustainably. We now have the opportunity to develop our own fisheries policy, to establish a management regime that is relevant to our waters and to our fleet. The moment we leave the EU, the EEZ becomes our exclusive economic zone and our task will be to manage this change in co-operation with our maritime neighbours. Our mission will be to create a policy that is fairer to the UK and delivers not only a more modern, profitable and competitive UK fishing industry but a healthier marine environment—a policy that helps to preserve the livelihoods of the approximately 25,000 people employed in the fishing and fish-processing industries in our coastal communities.

By all means let us acknowledge the challenges, but equally, let us be positive and welcome the opportunities that present themselves to create profitable, productive industries that secure the future of our rural and coastal communities. Let us also be associated with the highest welfare standards for animals and for custodianship of our countryside, and healthy coastal waters, enabling us to take advantage of a global appetite for high-quality foodstuffs in markets that value both quality and the principles of sustainable development.