I can see the greedy glint in Darling's eyes.

"All your bees are belong to us!"

Didn't he already solve this one?

Where are the greens this year?? Was Gore wrong?

Bees should be helped to survive. They do more for us than Polar Bears.

..... hits the comments, a serious note.

This is long overdue. No pollinators = no food. Full stop. Apart from fish. And Brussels says we can't catch them any more.

France, Germany, Slovenia and several others countries in Europe have already banned the extraordinarily toxic class of pesticides which is killing off all the bees. The Commons Select Committees in the UK are stuffed with 'eminent' environmental experts (corporate shills) from, er .... biotech and agrichemical companies. They, unsurprisingly, boldy claim that pesticides have absolutely nothing to do with bee deaths. They do, and the class of neonicotinoid pesticides - even in miniscule quantities - are deadly to or seriously interfere with bees' normal funcion. Bayer are the main culprit, with 'clothianidin'.

As usual, we lead the world in protecting vested corporate interests, and bring up the rear when it comes to environmental protection and safeguarding public health.

This measure is simply a diversionary tactic.

The grant money came from to study bee's behaviour when smacked off their tits

I am looking to set up hive in the Spring, can I have some free bees (and suit, smoker, hive etc).

It is, after all, in the national interest and I can flog the honey at the car boot!

I think you will find that bumblebees, butterflies, moths & flies are more than capable of keeping pollination running. Still needs sorting out though - I like honey.

...more than they spend on Human health? 'Nuff said.

kill the bees

This might seem droll, but actually 4 million is well worthwhile to keep bee populations up. As a very few posters have pointed out, bees are important for the pollination of some crops. Here in NZ, professional beekeepers make their money from hiring out the hives for pollination; the honey is only a little bit of jam on top, as it were.

Yeah, yeah, Reg likes to have fun, but it would help to distinguish what is actually worthwhile from Govt support for the batshit stuff like "Alternative Medicine."

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Farming Today on R4, one very early Tuesday morning.

The plight of British bees in the UK was explained in the programme - and it's far more severe than I ever realised it was. Bees are either succumbing to a disease which infects more than 3/4 of all UK hives (carried by little bugs that get into the hives), or they're just being killed off by the European and American bees. Overall, the number of pollinating bees in the UK has been decreasing year on year for quite some time now.

There was discussion in that issue of Darling being approached to provide funding for research into this to see if the trend can be reversed - I hope it can, and I'm more than happy for taxpayers' money to be put into this rather than something like a harebrained nationalised IT scheme for the NHS.

Oh wait, what?

The bee approach to reproduction makes them susceptible to inbreeding - low resistance to disease and other changes is one result. English bees were long sought-after, but appear to have more problems surviving today.

I've several friends who keep bees, good pragmatic people all,and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to get an understanding of his local ecosystem(s). It appears to be similar to bringing up children.