A new buzz about town
Top chef creates community beehive in the middle of the
city
A top Scottish chef has sponsored a new hive of bees as part of
a community project in Glasgow.
Martin Wishart, who has three high-class restaurants and a cook
school, welcomed 20,000 honeybees into his hive in the Gorbals area
of the city yesterday.
The Carniolan bees, which come from Slovenia, are the first
colony to take part in the special project run by a company called
Johnny's Garden.
"I want my hive to help local disadvantaged children learn about
the importance of bees to the environment," Martin said.
"If we didn't have bees pollinating, we wouldn't have any
flowers or fruit or vegetables, so without bees human beings would
die off too. Bees are an accurate indicator of how we're treating
the planet."
Martin's bees are expected to make around 50 kilograms of honey
by September. Some of the Gorbals Honey will go to one of his
restaurants, but children living nearby will also be able to have
some.
It is hoped that eating the locally-made honey will help kids
with hayfever and asthma.
The Carniolan bees were chosen to be the first colony in the
project because they are quite tame and they are suited to our cold
Scottish climate.
Their hive has been made entirely of reclaimed materials such as
food palettes, mosquito nets and roof slates.
There are plans for three more community beehives to be created
in different city locations soon.
Join us on Glow TV on Friday 8 June at 11am when we'll be talking to
the head beekeeper from Johnny's Garden about the project, his job
and the importance of bees.
Click here to try our honeybee quiz.
Lesson ideas and
suggestions
Join the Daily What News Facebook group
Click here to watch a recording of
our most recent Daily What Newsround on Glow TV, featuring a
special guest from the Scottish SPCA (Glow login
required).
A new buzz about town
Call for action to save honeybees as pesticides are
blamed for wiping out millions of colonies
Honeybee hives are being lost every year in the US, while
beekeepers in Europe say that more than one million bee colonies
have been wiped out in France, Germany, Italy and the UK since
1994.
The environmental charity Friends of the Earth says that Britain
has lost over half the honey bees kept in managed hives in recent
years and wild honey bees are nearly extinct. Solitary bees are
declining in more than half the areas they've been studied and some
species of bumblebee have been lost altogether.
A study earlier this year suggested that pesticides called
neonicotinoids could be to blame.
Agricultural crops in Scotland and around the world are dosed
with the nicotine-based pesticides to prevent insects from damaging
them. But they could be to blame for the "colony collapse disorder"
that has been destroying bee populations.
"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we
found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian
Krupke, a professor who was involved in the study. Bees also
suffered from tremors, unco-ordinated movement and convulsions,
which are all signs of insecticide poisoning.
"Even small amounts landing on flowering plants around a field
can kill foragers or be transported to the hive in contaminated
pollen," Krupke said.
Graham White, a beekeeper from the Scottish Borders, wants the
pesticides to be banned.
"We are facing a global ecological catastrophe in which
honeybees, bumblebees and butterflies are being wiped from the face
of the landscape in every country where neonicotinoids have been
introduced," he said.
Buglife, which campaigns to protect insects, described the
pesticides as "massively toxic" to wildlife.
"All the evidence indicates that this pollution kills bees,
moths, hoverflies and other essential pollinator species," said
Craig Macadam, from Buglife. "The government must ban
neonicotinoids now before further damage is done to our fragile
ecosystems."
The pesticide industry, however, blamed parasites and diseases
for killing bees, and maintained that the levels of neonicotinoids
in pollen were too low to damage their health. Restrictions in
France, now withdrawn, had made no difference to bee health, it
argued.
Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth has launched a campaign called
the Bee Cause to call for action on bees before it's too late. The
charity has come up with a bee action plan with suggestions on the
planning of our towns, the way we farm and use pesticides and
funding for nature experts in the government to ensure vital bee
populations are restored.
If bees did not exist in the UK, it would cost us £1.8 billion
every year to hand-pollinate crops.
Hand-pollination is already being used in parts of the world
where bee populations have been wiped out, such as China's Hanyuan
County where pear trees have to be pollinated by humans
"Bees are responsible for most of our favourite fruit and
vegetables so as well as the huge blow to our economy, our diet
would also suffer," said Paul de Zylva from Friends of the
Earth.
Join us on Glow TV on Friday 8 June at 11am when we'll be talking to
the head beekeeper from Johnny's Garden about the project, his job
and the importance of bees.
Click here to try our honeybee quiz.
Lesson ideas and
suggestions
Join the Daily What News Facebook group
Click here to watch a recording of
our most recent Daily What Newsround on Glow TV, featuring a
special guest from the Scottish SPCA (Glow login
required).