Category Archives: Honey bees

All pollinators are equal, but some pollinators are more equal than others

The infamous line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm asserting that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” nicely captures an ecological view of pollinators and their relationships with plants. “Pollinators” by definition move pollen between flowers, but not all pollinators are equally good at transferring pollen of any particular plant: some are more effective than others. I’ll illustrate this with examples from the urban garden that Karin and I are developing, which I’ve discussed before.

As you can see from that link, the garden is modest in size, but nonetheless this year it contains a significant biodiversity of edible plants that require pollinators for some or all of the fruit and seed set, including: strawberries, apples, greengages, cherries, blackcurrants, squashes, courgettes, blackberries, fennel, runner beans, french beans, passion fruit, tomatoes, raspberries, and radishes.

“Radishes?!” I hear you ask. “But they are grown for their edible swollen roots which don’t require pollination!” True, usually. But we let our radishes flower because we mainly grow them for their seed pods which, picked young, are delicious in salads and stir fries, like mustardy mange tout. They look like this:

The radish flowers are pollinated by a diversity of insects including butterflies, bees, and small flies:

These insects will vary in their effectiveness as pollinators of radish, depending on the frequency of visits, how often they move between flowers, and the amount of pollen on their bodies. This last factor is largely a function of size and hairiness (bigger, hairier insects carry more pollen as a rule), though cleanliness also plays a part: insects often groom the pollen from their bodies and, in the case of bees, may pack it into their pollen baskets where it’s not available for pollination.

The size and behaviour aspect is best illustrated by some recent photos that I took of visitors to the flowers of passion fruit (Passiflora caerulea var.). We have a large, sprawling plant growing up a fence which is currently being visited by honey bees, hoverflies, solitary bees and bumblebees. In comparison to the size of the flower and the position of the anthers (male, pollen producing parts) and stigmas (female, pollen receiving parts), the hoverflies, honey bees and solitary bees are relatively small. These two images are of honey bees (Apis mellifera):

Here’s an unidentified solitary bee:

These bees were occasionally touching the anthers, mainly with their wings, so some pollen will be moved around. But from what I observed it’s likely to be a relatively small amount in comparison to bumblebees, which are usually much larger and hairier, and don’t groom themselves as often as honey bees. Here’s a Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris):

They were actively collecting pollen as well as nectar. Much of this pollen is packed into the pollen baskets on the rear legs and will go back to the nest to feed the developing larvae, but some will be involved in pollination:

So it seems to be the bumblebees we have to mainly thank for the deliciously sweet-sour fruit we will enjoy later in the season. Of course to test this properly we would need to set up an experiment in which we excluded larger bumblebees from the flowers and only allowed smaller bees to forage, with appropriate experimental controls. Would make a great project if any of my students are interested! But it should give you a sense of just how complex the interactions between flowers and their pollinators are: the ecology of pollination is far from simple, despite what some would have us believe.

“These things aren’t to study. They’re to turn up very loud and say, hey, once upon a time, everything was just as easy as this”

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The title of this brief post is a quote by Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant, from an interview that the BBC reported just this morning, regarding the forthcoming release of previously unheard Zeppelin material. You can read the story and hear the interview here.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m not averse to sprinkling musical references into my posts, and this was a great quote that seemed to chime with something else I read this morning. Over at the Small Pond Science blog, evolutionary ecologist Amy Parachnowitsch has a thought provoking post entitled “Save the bees, but maybe not this way“. I’ll let you read it for yourself, but in a nutshell Amy is concerned about the scientific legitimacy of a “Save the Bees” campaign being crowd funded by online activist network Avaaz.org.

I share this concern and it worries me that whoever is organising the campaign is exploiting the genuine desire by people to “do something for the bees” without any regard for what exactly it is that’s “being done”. It seems to me to be purely a campaign fund-raiser by people who don’t understand the issues or how science works, the message being: “These things aren’t to study. They’re to turn up very loud and say, hey, once upon a time, everything was just as easy as this”.

The organisers promise “the world’s first large scale, grass-roots supported, totally independent study of what’s killing our bees that decisively challenges the junk science of big pharma”. As Amy notes, this is hugely offensive to independent scientists who are working on bee conservation issues (such as myself). But without ever actually saying what they are going to do with the money, they’ve already had pledges of money from over 78,000 people! If only raising funds for real research was that easy!

To reiterate what I said in the comments to Amy’s post, something that really worries me is that over-emphasis on pesticides and honey bees as single issues affecting “pollinator conservation” deflects attention from other factors which are at least as important, such as habitat loss. Colleagues and I have a manuscript in preparation at the moment showing that native bee and flower-visiting wasp extinctions in Britain began in the mid-19th century and reached their highest rate during the period 1929-1959, during a time of rapid agricultural intensification (but prior to the introduction of neonicotinoid pesticides that is currently exercising many people). Loss of pollinator diversity is an issue that has deep roots.

In actual fact, although wild bee diversity is declining in the UK, overall abundance seems to be stable as some species are doing extremely well, including a new natural colonist, the Tree Bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) which is spreading fast and is locally common. But clearly greater diversity provides us with future insurance against losses of other species.

There are positive things that can be done for pollinator populations by every citizen, beyond giving money to crappy, pseudo-scientific campaigns, as I talked about in a recent post of mine. So please don’t contribute to this Avaaz.org request, and use the money you save to buy some wild flower seeds and/or the Led Zeppelin reissues. It will make the world a better place.

What are YOU doing for our pollinators this year? (reduce, reuse, recycle part 6)

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Earlier this year I was asked to write a short article by my former PhD student, and still a current collaborator, Dr Sam Tarrant. Sam works for the RSPB as the CEMEX UK-funded Biodiversity Advisor, and wanted something on pollinator conservation that could be circulated in the CEMEX company’s e-newsletter. In the spirit of reworking and reusing odd bits of writing, I thought I’d post it here too.

Insects are vital for our country’s economy. Don’t believe me? Then read on….

Beneath a large black mulberry tree near the University of Northampton’s Newton Building there is a plaque that commemorates its planting “On Shakespeare Commemoration Day, 3^rd May 1916”. Despite its age this tree annually produces large crops of succulent berries, aided by the fact that wind eddies are sufficient to disperse its pollen, ensuring pollination and fruit set. Each year it’s a scramble between students, lecturers and birds, to see who can eat the most.

In contrast, the old apple trees in the grounds possess a different strategy – pollination by insects that move from flower to flower each spring. This form of pollination is both more sophisticated and less reliable than wind pollination, and is currently under considerable threat: whilst there will never be a shortage of wind currents in Britain, insect pollinators are in decline.

The apples trees are not alone in requiring insects to pollinate them, so to do other farm and garden crops, including oil seed rape, field beans, courgettes, runner beans, and strawberries and other soft fruit. It’s worth at least £440 million annually to the British economy, and most of it is done by wild bees and hoverflies, rather than managed hives of honey bees.

But all is not well with these insects in Britain – they are in decline. Although the extent of the “pollination crisis” is debated by scientists, long term records show us that these insects are under pressure: 23 species of bee and flower-visiting wasp have gone extinct since the mid 1800s, as have 18 species of butterflies. Less obviously, other species have considerably reduced in abundance so that they are now found in only a small part of their previous distribution.

There are lots of gardeners who want to “do something” for the pollinators, and keeping honey bees is often mentioned. By all means, if you wish to help the honey bees (which are suffering their own problems) then keep a hive or two. That will not, however, help our wild, native pollinators; the analogy I use is that it’s the equivalent of trying to help our declining songbirds by opening a chicken farm!

If you want to make a real difference for pollinators in your own garden, here are a few ideas:

start by planting nectar and pollen rich flowers; there’s a useful list on the Royal Horticultural Society’s website (see below).
allow plants such as clover and dandelion to flower in your lawn, bees love them.
as well as food, pollinators also need nest and egg laying sites, so you could help by allowing some of the far corners of your plot to run a little wild.
wait until late Spring to cut back hollow stemmed perennials as they are used as hibernating places by some of our bees.
allow mason bees to nest in old walls and don’t worry about them, the wall won’t fall down.
And finally, stop using pesticides!

Changing some of our gardening habits can help a group of insects on which we rely and which supports our economy in a very real way.

Further reading and information:

Bees Wasps and Ants Recording Society: http://www.bwars.com/

Bumblebee Conservation Trust: http://www.bumblebeeconservation.org.uk/

Butterfly Conservation: http://www.butterfly-conservation.org/

Hoverfly Recording Scheme: http://www.hoverfly.org.uk/

Royal Horticultural Society’s list of plants for pollinators: http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Sustainable-gardening/Plants-for-pollinators

Thank the insects for Christmas (REBLOG)

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It’s become a tradition (ok, only for the past two years, but a tradition has to start somewhere!) for me to post a version of this festive blog entry. I’ve updated the stats for 2013. Hope you enjoy it.

Christmas! A time to relax and enjoy ourselves, to share time with family and friends, and to unwind during the cold and gloom of winter. Whatever your faith, or lack of it, Christmas should be about taking a break and reflecting on the year that has passed. We’re helped in that respect by the ceremonial seasonal trimmings: the Christmas tree, strings of flashing lights, baubles and tinsel. So while you’re kissing a loved one under the mistletoe, admiring that glossy holly wreath, or tucking into your Christmas dinner, spare a thought for the insects.

“What in Saint Nicholas’s name” you are asking ”have insects got to do with Christmas?!” Well, like the turkey, we’d be stuffed without them: they play an essential part in providing us with the things we associate with Christmas. If we had no flies, wasps, bees and other bugs acting as pollinators there’d be no berries on your mistletoe or your holly. Kissing and admiring would be a less festive affair and that’s just for starters. These insects also pollinate many of the vegetables, herbs and spices on your plate, as well as some of the forage that went to fatten your roast bird or tender joint of meat. Not to forget much of what went into the nut roast that’s feeding the vegetarian relatives.

The economic value of insect pollination in the UK was estimated by the recent National Ecosystem Assessment to be about £430 million per year. In fact this is a huge under valuation because the labour costs alone of paying people to hand pollinate those crops would run into billions of pounds. This sounds far fetched but it’s already happening to fruit crops in parts of China. The answer is to encourage wild insects, not artificially managed honey bees, because collectively the former are far more abundant, and often more effective, as pollinators. Their diversity is an insurance against losing any one species in the future. The NEA’s valuation is also too low because it only deals with commercial edible crops, and does not include those we grow in our gardens and allotments. It also does not take account of ornamental crops such as mistletoe and holly, both of which are dioecious species, which is to say that individuals are either male or female, rather than hermaphrodite as are most plants. This means that the plants cannot self pollinate and insects are absolutely vital to their reproduction and to the production of the decorative berries we so value (a holly wreath without berries is just a big spiky doughnut, in my opinion).

Whilst researching the economic value of the annual mistletoe and holly crops for this blog posting last year I had a conversation with Jonathan Briggs over at Mistletoe Matters and he told me that “the mistletoe trade in Britain is entirely unregulated and not documented in any tangible way”, and the same is true of holly. We therefore have no idea what the economic value of these non-food crops actually is. But some back-of-the-red-and-gold-Christmas-lunch-napkin calculations can at least give us an insight. Auction reports for 2013 show that on average the best quality berried holly was selling for £2.50 per kg whilst equivalent quality holly without berries sold for only 80p per kg. In other words, pollination by insects increases the value of that crop by more than 300%! Similarly the high quality mistletoe averaged £1.20 per kg, whilst the second grade stuff was only 40p per kg. And the best holly wreaths (presumably with berries!) were averaging £7.00 each.

These are wholesale prices, of course; retail cost to the customer is much greater. A decent holly wreath will set you back between £15 and £30 whilst online shopping for mistletoe is in the £5 to £20 range, depending on how much you want. The national census of 2011 shows us that there are 23.4 million households in England and Wales, plus there are 2.36 million in Scotland and 0.70 million in Northern Ireland. Let’s round it down and say there’s 26 million households in the whole of the UK. Let’s also be very conservative and estimate that only 5% of those households bought one holly wreath and some mistletoe at a total cost of £20. Multiply that by the small proportion of households buying these festive crops and you arrive at a figure of about £26.5 million! And that doesn’t include non-household use in shops, offices and businesses. So there you have it: an industry worth a few tens of millions (at least) all being ultimately supported by insects.

With pollination, timing is everything, and Jonathan also made the point that spring flowering mistletoe and holly can be important early nectar sources for insects. Therefore despite the poor summer weather in 2012, that year was a good one for mistletoe berries because the pollination happened before the heavy rains began. Despite being quite common plants, rather little research has been done on either holly or mistletoe pollination in the UK and it would make for an interesting student project. The Landscape and Biodiversity Research Group here at the University has for many years been working to understand the ecology of plants and pollinators, and how to best conserve them. In this blog I’ve referred a few times to some ongoing projects researching how the wider landscape is supporting pollinators in habitats such as country house gardens (Hilary Erenler’s PhD work which she completed this year) and urban centres (ongoing PhD work by Muzafar Hussain). There’s also the work completed a few years ago by Sam Tarrant and Lutfor Rahman on pollinator (and other) biodiversity on restored landfill sites. Plus research that’s recently started by Kat Harrold on how whole landscapes support pollinators in the Nene Valley Nature Improvement Area. This is all part of a broader programme of research into the conservation of biodiversity in our region and beyond, including our Biodiversity Index, a contribution to the Shared Enterprise Empowering Delivery (SEED) sustainability project.

Biodiversity matters and its importance to our society is being increasingly recognised by government, business and the public. So if you make one New Year’s resolution on the 31st December, let it be that you will put away your garden bug sprays for 2014 and learn to love the insects (even wasps!) who give us so much and help to support our economy in a very real way. It costs us nothing; all we need to give them is well managed, diverse, unpolluted habitats in which to live. Have a great Christmas everyone!

The strange and the familiar….. (back from) Brazil Diary 8

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The first bird I identified when I arrived in Brazil on 1st November was a feral pigeon (Columba livia) foraging around the airport; the first bee I spotted, visiting flowers around FUNCAMP, was a honey bee (Apis mellifera). This tells you a lot about the widespread, near ubiquitous distribution of such species, which have been moved across much of the planet, accidentally and on purpose, by human activities. For someone who is deeply interested in biodiversity, seeing these species is both humdrum and interesting. Humdrum because they are so familiar, we see them everywhere we go, they are not exciting and exotic. Interesting because they tell us a lot about the effects that humans have on their environment, how we are altering it by the introduction of non-native species.

Away from the large cities I saw introduced species such as these less and less frequently, such is their association with humans. But of course there were also plenty of native Brazilian species that have become associated with human activities. Some of these had a familiarity about them which transcended the fact that they were species I’d never see in Britain. Black Vultures (Coragyps atratus) are the best example. I would frequently observe them perched on lamp posts in towns, scanning for food or squabbling amongst themselves, and also spotted a huge number feeding on the refuse being piled into a landfill site. Back home I associate this sort of behaviour with various species of gulls. Strange and familiar.

Back in Northampton I’ve been reflecting on my month-long visit to Brazil, catching up with colleagues, telling stories that get more impressive with each iteration. It’s been a packed couple of weeks and Brazil seems a long way away, not just geographically.

The Biodiversity Index did not win the Green Gown Award that it was short listed for, as I previously reported, but it did receive a Highly Commended citation. Green Gown have asked us to produce a video, so a few days after I returned home, and still with a bit of my brain in Brazil, I took part in a short recording session about the Biodiversity Index, which will be released shortly. The video is produced by Jo Burns and her company Amplitude Media. Jo is a graduate of the University of Northampton and this is a nice example of how the University is supporting former students as they develop their careers.

At the end of last week we also got the news that the Biodiversity Index has been shortlisted for a Guardian newspaper University Award in the sustainability category. More recognition for the work we’ve done on that project, and we are very pleased! The result will be known early next year.

As of this week our paper on “How many plants are pollinated by animal?“, published in the journal Oikos in 2011, has notched up its 100th citation according to Web of Knowledge. The less conservative Google Scholar puts it at 164, so the true answer will be somewhere in between. Clearly peers think it’s a useful bit of work. And to think it was almost rejected by Oikos, saved only by an appeal. The idea for the paper arose when I was trying to find a solid figure in the literature for the proportion of plants that are biotically pollinated. Lots of figures were being bandied about, but once you follow the reference chain back through the papers that cite them you find that numbers which are cited as solid facts disappear into speculation and guestimates. Like many of the simple and obvious questions, the assumption is that we “know” the answer. That’s no basis for science-informed policy, but I suspect that it happens all too frequently.

No Sleep ’til Ubatuba – Brazil Diary 5

Harvest of evidence

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The last entry I posted was premature in its prediction that autumn is here and for the past week we’ve enjoyed some bright, warm weather: an Indian Summer before autumn proper envelops us. Sunday afternoon was spent in the garden, digging up potatoes and planting the garlic we bought on the Isle if Wight. Neither of these crops requires pollinators, but others we’ve been harvesting this month do, including squashes, runner beans and greengages. The latter are from a mature tree that, when we took over the house in 2012, I assumed was a bog standard Victoria plum. The tree did not crop last year but has more than compensated this season with abundant deliciously sweet fruit.

All of this provides useful anecdotes for public lectures. Since appearing on Bees, Butterflies and Blooms I’ve regularly been asked to give talks to gardening societies and I try not to refuse because they are usually fun with attentive, knowledgeable audiences. At one such event earlier this year I was asked: “Is there any evidence that declining pollinators are resulting in lower crop yields in Britain?” It’s a great question that goes to the heart of evidence-based conservation and the notion that science should be informing such policies as strategies to conserve biodiversity.

As far as I’m aware there is no indication that British insect pollinated crop yields have declined. And if the evidence of our greengages, runner beans and squashes is anything to go by, there’s currently plenty of wild bees, hoverflies and other insects (we get few honeybees in this garden) to service those food plants that require their pollinating activities. But that doesn’t mean we should be complacent and monitoring is required, because the evidence from other countries is that yields are down for insect pollinated crops and hand pollination is required in some places.

Evidence should inform everything that we do and believe as scientists, gardeners, informed members of the public, whatever label we choose for ourselves. This is especially true of currently controversial issue such as the causes of global climate change or the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on pollinator health (see Dave Goulson’s slides from a recent conference talk, for example). But we should also understand that a basic tenet of science is that it can never “prove” anything: new evidence may appear at any time that refutes our cherished notions, or disproves that pet hypothesis. We make decisions on weight of evidence not on proof. So it was depressing to read a widely publicised article about a Nigerian postgraduate student’s claims that he has “proved” that homosexual relationships are “unnatural” because only the opposite poles of magnets are attractive to one another, the same chemical compounds do not react together, and roosters only love hens. At first I thought it was a spoof but it appears that the research student is perfectly serious and, more, has been tipped to win a Nobel Prize by his equally deluded supervisors.

It’s easy to scorn the guy’s findings and point out that people aren’t magnets or simple chemical compounds and that homosexual activity is widespread in the animal world (so how do we define “unnatural”?) But Karin, as always, had a deeper and more nuanced view of this story than did I. Perhaps it’s her training in psychotherapy but whatever the reason, she gave an alternative perspective and pointed out a sad possibility. Karin suspects that the student has been manipulated by academic and political powers that have a vested interest in such “proof” because of threatened sanctions on aid. Under this scenario the student has been encouraged by the academics at the university to pursue this misguided work, which can only support the Nigerian government’s anti-gay stance. Of course the research will never be published by any reputable scientific journal and the story has harmed the University of Lagos’s international reputation. But for the narrow minded and biblically fundamentalist, the story itself will be evidence enough to shore up their own prejudices. One person’s crackpot claims is another’s decisive evidence.

Any friend of coffee is a friend of mine

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As I begin to write this post rain is pattering against the windows with increasing frequency and a brisk wind stirs the browning horse chestnut leaves that overhang the garden from a neighbouring property. Autumn is here. It’s a chilly Sunday morning and beside me is a large cup of good coffee, hot, black, and bitter, warming and stimulating in equal measure. It’s our first Sunday at home for a fortnight as last weekend was taken up by a speaking engagement in Hereford at a large bee keeping convention where coffee featured highly, as I’ll explain.

The Hereford convention wasn’t the kind of academic research conference that I’d normally attend, but I thought it would be fun to go with Karin, and I’d learn more about bee keeping (both proved to be true). For this broad audience of amateur and professional bee keepers I presented a version of my professorial inaugural lecture from earlier this year entitled “How many bees does it take to wake up in the morning? The importance of biotic pollination in a changing world”. It’s a title with multiple layers of meaning, referring to bees as ecosystem service providers, my enjoyment of my work which gets me out of bed every day, and the energising effects of a strong cup of fresh coffee first thing.

As part of that lecture I present some back-of-the-envelope calculations that are meant to put coffee production into a biodiversity perspective, rather than being a rigorous analysis, but which are nonetheless worth considering. They go like this.

Global coffee consumption in 2010 (the most recent year for which I could find figures) amounted to 93 million export bags, each weighing on average 60kg (there are larger and smaller bags used in different parts of the world, so we’ll use this figure). The export value of this crop was estimated at US$15 billion for the (largely tropical) countries that produced it. That’s the value before it’s processed and sold, which is much more difficult to calculate, though coffee retailing is clearly big business. For example, Starbucks’ total revenue for the same year was US$10.7 billion and it supports over 150,000 full time employees. So it’s lucky for us that it pays its taxes.

Although coffee is partly self pollinating, it relies on insect pollination to produce large crops, mainly involving bees of various types. I tracked down a number of studies by researchers such as Alexandra-Maria Klein and Taylor Ricketts which showed that managed honey bees are responsible for anywhere between zero and over 90% of flower visits, depending on the diversity and abundance of local wild bees (over 40 species of which are known to pollinate coffee in Costa Rica alone). At this point I throw out a question to the audience: how well do we understand this globally important agricultural ecosystem service? Do we have any idea of how many individual insects are required to support this industry? Some more calculations:

Each coffee bean is the product of a single fertilisation event following the deposition of at least one pollen grain on a flower’s stigma. The mean weight of a single coffee bean is 0.103g (I weighed a sample in preparation for the lecture) which means there are approximately 582,524 beans in a 60kg bag. Total number of coffee beans produced in 2010 is therefore 93 million bags multiplied by 582,524 beans per bag, which equals 54,174,757,281,553. In words, that’s more than 54 trillion coffee beans. As coffee is 50% self pollinating we can half that figure: coffee production requires at least 27,087,378,640,777 (over 27 trillion) pollinator visits.

But here I confess to the audience that it’s impossible to go further and answer the questions I posed above: we really have no idea how many bees are supporting the coffee industry. The problem is that there are big gaps in our knowledge of some basic aspects of the natural history of these bees and their interactions with coffee flowers. For example, how many flowers does an individual bee visit in its lifetime? How effective are different bees at pollinating the flowers? What is the minimum population size for these bees, below which they would go locally extinct? All that we can say with certainty is that the global coffee industry (and the individual productivity of many workers) is supported by a LOT of bees. Many billions is my best guestimate. Perhaps we don’t need to know the number: perhaps it’s enough to know that if we provide sufficient good quality habitat for these bees, they will provide the service. But at least it illustrates our reliance on these insects and is something to consider when you’re enjoying the first cup of the day.

Bees are not the only animals that we have to thank for coffee production as a recently published study has shown: birds in Costa Rica help to reduce the impact of an important pest of coffee. As Jana Vamosi, from whom I shamelessly stole the title of this posting, commented when I posted this link on Facebook: any friend of coffee is a friend of mine!

Are honey bees native to Britain? And does it matter?

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It’s no secret that I’ve become frustrated over recent years by the general confusion in the media between the concerns relating to honey bee health (which are largely veterinary/husbandry problems, though pesticides may also play a role) and declines in wild pollinators, which are a wildlife conservation issue mainly due to habitat destruction, though again pesticides are probably having an impact.

That frustration came to a head last year when colleagues and I published a short letter in the influential journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution that was prompted by a throwaway remark in an earlier article stating that honey bees “are essential pollinators for the maintenance of natural biodiversity” No they are not. And you can read for yourself why we responded to that article if you follow the link above.

In a recent posting on the Adventuresinbeeland blog, Emily Heath discussed her attendance at a recent British Library event about pollinators and pesticides. I commented on the blog and in passing mentioned honey bees as being “not native” to which one respondent demurred and wrote: “I thought honey bees ARE native to Britain, although they have been bred with various breeds ……. Apis mellifera mellifera is a British native, isn’t it?”. I’ll paraphrase my response here:

The only study that I’m aware of that has addressed this question is Norman Carreck’s paper from 2008 – you can download a PDF of that article here. Norman is convinced that Apis mellifera mellifera is native to Britain but, as I interpret it, the evidence he presents is circumstantial and the earliest archaeological remains of honey bees are all associated with human settlements. Even if honey bees were originally native to Britain, the present situation, in which honey bees have been selectively bred and hybridised, is akin to using Tamworth pigs as evidence that wild boar are native.

However for me the most compelling evidence that honey bees are not native is ecological: despite their generalist nature and ability to form large colonies when managed, out in the wider countryside of Britain honey bees do not do particularly well. “Wild” honey bees are never very abundant (compared with some bumblebee species, for instance) and feral colonies in natural settings are few and far between.

This prompted a to-and-fro discussion with Emily that you can read for yourself.

Are honey bees native to Britain? The jury is out but the balance of evidence as I see it is pointing to them being a human introduction. Does it matter? In many respects, no. Honey bees are (like any other agricultural animal) a utilitarian species that provides us with a range of benefits. But in one respect it DOES matter – and that is in relation to how we formulate and put in place strategies to reverse the decline of wild pollinators such as bumblebees, hoverflies and butterflies. If honey bees become the central focus of such strategies (and funding), due to confusion in the minds of the public, MPs, policy makers, businesses, the media and other influential bodies, then wild pollinators would lose out. In my opinion that would be a great mistake. I’d be interested to know what other people think.