And as Bob puts it “all they do is hang around waiting for a chance to mate with the queen!” Being a bee is no holiday for the females though. Unfortunately our honey bees are often mistaken for wasps, they are much smaller and slimmer than wild bees and have similar stripy abdomens – so try to think twice before you swat and remember a honey bee will only ever sting you as a last resort because unlike wasps she will die afterwards.Ī busy honey bee – not to be mistaken for a waspĭid you know that of the 60 – 80,000 honey bees in a hive nearly all are female? There are a few males called drones but they only make up about 10% of the colony. They are Solitary, Humble or Bumble bees and they don’t produce honey for us, although they do do the important job of pollinating our plants and flowers. In recent years however small colonies of our native bees have been located in isolated pockets in Cornwall, Wales and Scotland.īritain has nearly 300 different species of bees but most of them are the large furry balls we all see bumbling around the garden. the new colonies came mostly from Italy and surprisingly this is a trend that has continued. After this disaster British beekeepers were forced to import bees from southern Europe. Most of Britain’s native bee population was wiped out in the 1920s (along with most Northern Europe’s honey bee population) by the deadly Isle of Wight disease. Up until quite recently they were thought to be extinct. You can be forgiven for not knowing that Cornwall has its own native bee. How we can make a positive impact on these special insects who play such a vital role in our delicate ecosystem. I decided to find out what we can all be doing to help. Have some honey! So I have also shared in her fears for these wonderful, essential creature’s future. My mother uses it as a bit of a cure-all. My mother has kept bees for going on 30 years and I grew up enjoying our own honey. Frighteningly some figures estimate that bee populations have fallen by a staggering 75% in the past century. But studies have pointed to changes in climate, pesticides and a rise in devastating diseases, such as varroa, as the probable root of the problem. There is no single cause for the bees’ decline. It is now estimated that of the roughly two thousand species of bee in Europe one in ten of those is now endangered. In recent years the news coverage of their plight has become increasingly worrying. The sad fact is that bees are in real trouble. Could the Cornish Black Bee be an answer to the decline in bee population in the UK?
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