Downing Street

Three hundred white-suited beekeepers with veiled faces marched to Downing Street yesterday to demand increased funding for research to halt the extermination of millions of honey bees.

The British Beekeepers’ Association says hives are in such poor condition that stocks of English honey will run out by Christmas.

About £200,000 a year is spent on research into bee health and £1.3 million more on hive inspection to keep a check on disease. But the association wants £8 million to be allocated over the next five years to find out why colonies are being lost.

Times Archive, 1864: The Bee-Master's sermon

Morals, money, country and enjoyment may all be helped a little by keeping bees

It claims that pollination by bees would be worth £825 million to the agriculture economy over the same period – less than 1 per cent of the research sum being demanded.

Tim Lovett, the association’s chairman, from Claygate, Surrey, said that colonies were collapsing at the rate of 30 per cent a year, the same as in the United States. He has lost half his bees in 12 months and now has only two hives.

Bee loss is linked to wet weather and the varroa mite, which arrived in the UK 16 years ago and affects 95 per cent of hives, spreading other viruses. There are about 44,000 beekepers in Britain who look after 274,000 hives and produce 6,000 tonnes of honey a year.

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