Honey Bees are dying off

Little wonder then that there is such consternation over the fact they are dying out in record numbers.

The British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) says a record one in three of the UK's 240,000 hives did not survive the spring.

The problem is nobody is sure why the bees are being wiped out in such huge numbers.
At the moment, the government spends £1.3 million on bee health, including £200 000 invested in research.

But today, as the government closes its consultation into honeybee health, the country's beekeepers, farmers and honeymakers are calling for action. They want the funding increased to £8 million.

Tim Lovett, head of the BBKA told Sky News Online: "We're seeing winter losses rising. It's no good blaming it all on the weather. And it's certainly not appropriate to blame it on bad beekeeping.

"There's something going on here in the hives that we don't understand and we should therefore research it.
Really, in the context of Government expenditure, the money we're asking for is really small change. We cannot afford to take these risks."

There are a number of theories as to why our honeybees may be dying.
The government partly blames recent bouts of bad weather and certain new pesticides are also thought to be harmful.

But the main culprit, here in Britain, is the deadly Varroa mite, a parasite which thrives on hives and leaves dead bees in its wake.

There's something going on here in the hives that we don't understand and we should therefore research it.
Tim Lovett, head of the British Beekeepers AssociationAnd it's not just British bees that are suffering.

In the United States, 36% of hives have died from a mystery virus called Colony Collapse Disorder.
The virus has also spread to France, Germany and Italy, but so far, has not been proved to exist in the UK.

All this is galling news for the UK's honey manufacturers - the biggest of which, Rowse's, is now pouring £100,000 into the national research pot, because of a lack of official funds.

Stuart Bailey, Chairman of Rowse's Honey, told Sky News Online: "By Christmas there will be no English honey in the supermarkets, I'm absolutely sure, because we're just not getting the honey in from the beekeepers.

"So we will have to import more in from abroad. That's tragic. Imagine if that were a permanent scenario: if there are no British honeybees, there'll be no British honey on the shelves."

We depend on honeybees to pollinate around a third of our home-grown food. A dependence which famously led Albert Einstein to warn: if the bees disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would only have four years left.

That may a little way off, but experts are now demanding that at the very least, the government kick-starts its disease research programme, to give bees a chance.