Bee Population

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on his wonderful introduction to this debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Patten. I must get a lime tree from somewhere. I first became aware of the serious nature of the decline in the population of honeybees and other pollinators when a campaign began in my former constituency of Cheltenham some years ago. It was started by some keen environmental campaigners who wanted to protect a meadow from development. I went to see the save the meadow campaigners to hear their case and was impressed by their knowledge—and somewhat alarmed by what they told me. As we have heard, there has been a massive loss of wild habitat for bees and other pollinators.

According to Buglife, 3 million hectares of flower-rich grassland has been lost since the end of the Second World War, leaving only 100,000 hectares remaining. Plantlife says that only 2% of wildlife meadows and grasslands that existed in the 1930s survive, with over 7 million acres lost. I commend to noble Lords Plantlife’s Saving Our Magnificent Meadows campaign, which aims to save 75,000 acres of the most vulnerable habitat. I would be interested to know from the Minister what assessment the Government have made of the effect of loss of habitat on bee populations. The Open Spaces Society has concerns about this too. It points out that open spaces in town and country are crucial to the nation’s health and well-being. Unfortunately, it says that the Growth and Infrastructure Bill threatens people’s ability to protect their rights to land which they have long used and loved. The Bill outlaws the registration of land as a town or village green once it is threatened with development. It hopes that the Bill will be amended to ensure that people can still protect their precious open spaces. Will the Government consider protecting meadows—and indeed village greens—in any future planning legislation?

We have heard that honeybees are only part of pollination: wild pollinators are crucial, too. Hoverflies and other fly varieties, butterflies and moths, bumblebees and other wild bees all play their part in pollination. However, these species, too, as we have heard, are in decline. Buglife tells me that scientific evidence suggests that in the UK only between 5% and 10% of pollination is done by honeybees and 90% to 95% by other pollinators. Does the Minister agree with Buglife that, while important, honeybees form only a small part of the insects which pollinate crops?

Honeybees are generalists that do not and cannot pollinate many plants. For example, bumblebees and flowerbees use buzz pollination—their wings must vibrate to ensure pollination. Many wild flowers have very specific relationships with certain insects which have long tongues or corollas. Because solitary bees carry pollen loosely on their abdomens and not packed tightly in bags, they are 300 times as effective at pollinating apple flowers compared with honeybees.

There is some scientific evidence that increasing the number of honeybees reduces the fitness of bumblebees in the local area. The last thing we want to end up with is a monoculture pollination system relying on one species that has been, and will be, subject to cycles of devastating disease. Six of 25 species of UK bumblebees have declined by at least 80 per cent in the past 50 years; short-haired bumblebees have been extinct since the early 1990s; 72% of butterfly species are declining; and two-thirds of larger moth species have declined. In the past 35 years, 75 species have declined by more than 70% and more than 250 UK pollinators are in danger of extinction and are listed on the UK BAP priority list.

If these losses continue unabated, there could be the loss of up to 80% of plant species and 13% of agricultural production, which would limit future food production options and add considerable costs to the agricultural industry. In the context of a global population that is predicted to reach 9.5 billion by 2075, this is very serious.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust points out that 84% of European crops and 80% of wild flowers rely on insect pollination. Soft fruit pollination is carried out predominantly by bumblebees. The trust suggests that in the absence of bees, food prices would rise. For example, the farm gate price of strawberries would increase from a 2009 price of £2.21 per kilo to £4.06. There are many different estimates, as we have heard, of the costs to British agriculture. What assessment have the Government made of the cost of the decline in honeybees and other pollinators? Do they agree with the highest figure that I have seen, from Friends of the Earth, that the decline in pollinators could pose an annual cost to British agriculture of £1.8 billion to pollinate crops?

Let me turn to professional beekeepers and their most wonderful product—honey—for which I have a particular weakness. Noble Lords will know that honey products from around the world can be bought in British shops. Indeed, a visit to Fortnum & Mason’s will be rewarded with the opportunity to buy honey from Pitcairn Island, where the human population is around 50. The island must have the highest ratio of beekeepers in the world. My particular favourite is honey from Botswana—I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register. I believe that the beekeepers of Botswana have applied for approval to export their honey to the European Union and I hope that they are successful.

I asked Mr Chris Broad, the secretary of the Worcestershire Beekeepers, for his view on the decline in the population of honeybees. He currently manages around 350 hives and has some interesting views. His main concern is that the Government’s policy should be driven by a good understanding of the true state of affairs and he believes that in recent years there has been a lot of misinformation and spin on honeybee health. He paints what he believes to be a more accurate picture.

He says that honeybee decline has been badly misunderstood. Population has only ever been measured by estimating the number of beekeepers and the average colonies per beekeeper. Even when beekeepers lose colonies in winter they can easily double their hives in summer using the bees’ urge to reproduce.

The beekeeper population has approximately trebled in the last five or six years. This has resulted in a trebling of the measurable honeybee population. It also means the average beekeeper is inexperienced.

In 2005, for example, Worcestershire Beekeepers had 170 members. Now they have 524. The umbrella organisation, the British Beekeepers Association, has shown a similar percentage growth over the same period.

Mr Broad says that honeybee health is a different thing entirely. He is expecting poor survival statistics this winter as a knock-on effect of the atrocious summer, combined with the relatively low skill level of the average beekeeper. My noble friend Lady Walmsley told me yesterday that she had lost all her bees this summer, and I have been trying to imagine her in full beekeeper’s outfit, tending to her hive. I must also now add the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, to that picture.

There are a number of major health threats to honeybees, Mr Broad tells me, primarily varroa, nosema and foulbrood, but he believes that all these are manageable by competent beekeepers. However, he points out that we are struggling to deliver adequate training to novice beekeepers while also attempting to train waves of brand new beekeepers each year. Virtually all training is given by volunteers. Pesticides are a concern because they could potentially cause localised beehive deaths. However, Mr Broad knows of only one such incident in the last 10 years in Worcestershire and says that it would be nice to have some kind of compensation scheme in case of big kills but that practically speaking no knowledgeable beekeeper would treat this as a priority. He believes that our short-term priority should be to increase the skill level of beekeepers by any means possible. Mr Broad criticises the overreliance on the bee inspectorate—FERA—service, which in its current form acts as a very expensive crutch to inexperienced beekeepers, and could be regarded as a disincentive to them to learn to manage honeybee health on their own.

Do the Government have any plans to encourage new beekeepers, to improve training for those who have started beekeeping recently; and what measures are available, for example, on capital allowances to help those setting up and maintaining hives?

This morning Mr Broad informed me that he had received something from Defra regarding the consultation “Improving honeybee health”, which runs for two months from today. After skimming through it, he says that it looks very positive; you might say that the consultation has received broad approval. The consultation includes a list of consultees. I suggest that the Government also invite responses from Buglife, Plantlife and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, which have been very helpful to me in preparing for this debate.

We have heard a lot about insecticides from noble Lords more experienced than me. My contact at Plantlife, Adrian Darby, is particularly concerned about the effect of neonicotinoids. What assessment have the Government made of research by scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health into colony collapse disorder?

In my view, the population decline of bees and other pollinators needs to be treated as a national emergency. The public needs to be more aware of the problem and encouraged to play a part in solving it.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust has a section on its website where individual gardeners can assess the bee-friendliness of their current garden, and it suggests the right plants to grow. The top 10 recommendations are mahonia, pussy willow, viburnum, lavender, scabious, borage, comfrey, pink allium, bell flower, and yellow aquilegia.

Do the Government agree with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust that encouraging individual gardeners to grow particular bee-friendly plants would be beneficial to bee populations and other pollinators? In addition, do the Government have any plans for an awareness campaign to inform the public of the importance of bees and other pollinators? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.