Editorial Features list 2009
27 Nov 2008 by Evoluted New Media
The honeybee is the unsung hero of the countryside, but there are 13.4 million too few colonies to properly pollinate Europe’s crops.
New research from the University of Reading shows that demand for insect pollination is growing five times faster than the number of honeybee colonies across the continent as farmers grow more oil crops and fruit.
Researchers compared the number of active beehives to the demand for pollination services in 41 countries and mapped the changes between 2005 and 2010 and found that there are not enough honeybees to properly pollinate the crops grown in more than half of European countries – and the UK has only a quarter of bees it needs to pollinate crops. Europe has only two-thirds of the honeybee colonies it needs, with the deficit reaching more than 13.4m colonies.
