Honey bee crisis threatens English fruit farmers

LONDON (Reuters) – Where in the United States, fruit farmers pay to have bees trucked thousands of miles to pollinate their crops and in parts of China, humans with feather dusters have taken on the task, in Britain most bees go nature’s way.

Britons have a deep nostalgia for home-grown honey and its associations with an ordered rural lifestyle. But here, too, the honey bee population is dwindling, and with winter under way faces a tough fight for survival.

Besides warnings the country will run out of English honey by Christmas, there is a threat to growers of fruits such as apples and pears.

A wet summer on top of changed sowings and increasingly intensive agriculture have limited opportunities to forage for nectar, risking starvation for bees. Most colonies are also infested with a dangerous parasitic mite.

Reuters