{"id":1073,"date":"2012-04-15T12:20:55","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T11:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greensideup.ie\/?p=1073"},"modified":"2015-07-12T23:37:19","modified_gmt":"2015-07-12T22:37:19","slug":"bee-cause-how-we-can-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greensideup.ie\/bee-cause-how-we-can-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Bee Cause – How we can help the bees"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Image courtesy of Friends of the Earth<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week\u00a0Friends of the Earth (UK)<\/a> launched a campaign “Bee Cause”, calling on the British government to commit to a “bee action plan to save bees and save the country billions of pounds in the future.”<\/em><\/p>\n

If you’ve been listening to the news over the past couple of years you’ll have no doubt heard that the decline in bee populations isn’t just a UK problem, it’s worldwide. A combination of issues from colony collapse disorder, parasites and\u00a0shortages in habitats are being blamed but whatever the cause, it’s serious.<\/p>\n

Bees aren’t just about honey – they help to pollinate strawberries, nuts, herbs, coffee and cotton to name just a fraction of items we use daily.<\/p>\n

According to research released this *week it would cost the UK \u00a31.8 billion every year to hand-pollinate crops without bees \u2013 20% more than previously thought.\u00a0That’s just one country, imagine that on a global basis. Finances apart, can you image a world without bees? I don’t even want to…<\/p>\n

In recent years Britain has lost over half the honey bees kept in managed hives and wild honey bees are nearly extinct. \u00a0Solitary bees are declining in more than half the areas they’ve been studied and some species of bumblebee have been lost altogether. These figures are replicated around the world.<\/p>\n

One reason for the bee decline is a shortage of natural habitats, so Friends of the Earth have outlined simple steps people can take in their gardens to help provide it:<\/p>\n