With honey bee numbers falling by 10-15% over the past two years, Defra and the Welsh Assembly have joined forces with the bee keeping industry to draft a 10 year plan to reverse the trend by helping beekeepers adopt effective bio-security.
Publication of the ‘healthy bees’ plan follows the investment of an additional £4.3m to gather information from bee keepers and carry out research. The first stage will be to make contact with as many as 20,000 beekeepers to make sure they understand the need to alert the National Bee Unit to bee health problems and encourage them to register on the national database. More than £2m will contribute over 5 years to a new research programme on pollinators.
More information can be found at www.defra.gov.uk/hort/Bees
Source: FSB, Essex Voice.
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Canvey Island is one of only seven locations across the south of England where the Shrill Carder Bee can be found. This smaller member of the bumblebee family is a fast mover and its flight period lasts from about April till September.
The queen makes a nest on or just below the ground among open vegetation, sometimes taking over a disused mouse or vole nest. By the time summer arrives, the nest will contain about 100 worker bees.
Its name comes from the high-pitched buzzing noise that the queen bee produces and her habit of scraping hairs off plants to make her nest; the same method used by a carder to straighten wool.
The Shrill Carder feeds on nectar and pollen taken from plants such as knapweed, woundwort, clover, vetch, red bartsia and narrow-leaved bird’s-foot trefoil.
According to the United Kingdom Biodiversity Action Plan, this species of bee requires a relatively large area of flower-rich habitat.
So the creation of Bumblebee Park is an ideal way to celebrate this important insect on Canvey. Groundwork will be continuing with their work on this site over the next few months.