A sting in the tail

I have just finished reading 'The Empty Chair' by Jeffrey Deaver. It is not in the 'Vanished man' class but not bad. It features a character referred to as the insect boy, who is at one with the small creatures of his environment. He uses references from insect based research books to theorise that if human life were to become extinct, the earth would survive quite happily without them, loose all the insects, however, the we would all be doomed.

With this in mind, I have been alarmed to read of the problems currently facing the world bee population. Bees matter. They make honey which I thoroughly enjoy, and the fertilise many of our garden flowers and fruits, but the bumblebee population is falling dramatically.

Some of the decline is due to insecticide usage in agriculture, but more worrying is that they are now under attack by parasites. Government assistance in isolating and eradicating the diseases which affect them has been cut to £1m, a reduction of 20%, just at the time it is most needed. researchers have been laid off and inspectors sacked.

There are 270,000 hives in Britain. Last Winter one in five colonies perished. Half of Italy's 50 billion honey bees died last year, and Colony Collapse Disorder has wiped out 2 million colonies across America and billions of bees worldwide.

We need bees, just as the insect boy said we do, and he is not alone. Einstein was said to have calculated that if bees disappear off the surface of the globe, mankind would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more life. I think the government need to reverse their funding policy soonest.