The decline in the Honey Bee population is a serious global problem, which has me seriously concerned. Many crops depend on bee pollination and farmers often hire bee hives to place along side their crops to help pollination. Suddenly the bee keepers were loosing whole hives on a daily basis and now this is a world wide phenomenon often referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) or Honey Bee Depopulation Syndrome (HBDS).
I was amazed when I read in the March 2011 issue of the independent that
"The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees."
and in later in March the UN issued a warning stating that
"Bee declines range up to 85 percent in some areas "
Although the exact cause is not yet known experts from The United Nations say that several factors maybe involved. ie..
- Decline in flowering plants
- Use of harmful insecticides
- Worldwide pollution
- Increase in pests such as the varroa destructor which attacks Honey Bees.
When I first decided to change to a more eco friendly lifestyle one of the first three rules I made was to only by vegetable and fruit plants instead of flowers. I have now changed this idea and take pleasure in my flowering plants as they have their purpose in the garden. I have just planted some big sun flowers to plant along the back of the vegetable patch to hopefully encourage our Andalusian bees, but actually bees like red and stripy flowers.
Not many of us can rush out and start a bee colony but here in Andalusia we are lucky in that running bee hives is popular and there are groups who hire fields in the campo for such activity. Also many of you may have seen on the trip up to Sierra Nevada that honey is sold along the roadside of in local shops.If you can't get to local products you could try http://www.elcortijodelasabejas.es which appears have a nice online service.
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