Wealden Times | WT171 | May 2016 | Restoration & New Build supplement inside

The
Green
Goddess
Penny Kemp
on the plight
of our humble
honey bee
I
first met Brigit Strawbridge when she was filming It’s Not
Easy Being Green for BBC2. For those of you who didn’t
see the programmes, she and her then husband, Dick
Strawbridge and family had bought a house in Cornwall and
were determined to live lightly on the planet by producing
their own electricity, water supply, food and fuel.
Brigit and I kept in touch and her path changed. She left the
house in Cornwall, studied bees and became an expert on bees
and their habitat. I’ve written about the importance of bees before
but I think it worth reminding everyone that we depend upon
the humble bee for our food supply and if it disappears, things
would get serious very quickly. In the 1950s we had over fifty
native species of bees in this country. Today we have twenty-five.
Although the number of non-native bees has increased, we are still
not sure why our British bees are dying.
Some experts have argued that it’s this invasion of nonnative
bees overcoming our own bees; others maintain it is the
widespread use of insecticides and pesticides, farmers spraying
crops and gardeners protecting their fruit, flowers and vegetables
with products that are designed to kill pests but inadvertently
hasten the demise of the humble bee. Disease is another killer and
colony collapse disorder is a serious phenomenon whereby whole
colonies of bees are wiped out. Several theories have been put
forward including the use of genetically modified crops. But there
is one area where the government seems unwilling to do anything.
The use of neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are a relatively new
pesticide and scientists suggest that they significantly harm bees.
But the government is demanding more research.
Following a National Pollinator Strategy, Brigit wrote an open
letter to the government in November last year and, whilst praising
it in some ways, asked what happened to the precautionary
principle and indeed simple common sense. She says, “It does not
take a rocket scientist to see the connection between neonicotinoid
pesticides and bee decline and no amount of further research
is going to change the fact that these highly dangerous neurotoxins,
which are now saturating our agricultural landscape and
waterways, are doing far more harm than good.”
Brigit is a campaigner who takes her work very seriously and,
if she questions the use of neonicotinoids, we should listen. She
concludes with this warning, “I can only conclude that people are
more interested in saving the pesticides industry than they are in
saving bees.”
Read the whole article on www.beestrawbridge.blogspot.co.uk
147 www.wealdentimes.co.uk
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