Fears for food crops as third of Irish bee species at risk of extinction
The UK was warned in recent days by scientists that it faced a food security catastrophe because of its very low numbers of honeybee colonies, which provide an essential service in pollinating many crops.
Dr Jane Stout, who was one of the co-authors of the new research which studied honeybees in 41 countries, said the Government needs to take action to protect wild bumblebees and other species of solitary bees as they are vital to the food chain.
She said: “We have 100 species of bees in Ireland, 20 of those are social bees like the bumblebee and the honeybees and the others are solitary bees.
“We did a national assessment of the 100 bees and a third of the species we could access were vulnerable to extinction.”
The study, headed up by the University of Reading, found that Europe has 13 m less managed honeybee colonies than would be needed to properly pollinate all its crops, equivalent to seven billion individual bees.
The rise in the planting of biofuels in Europe is driving up the need for pollination five times faster than the rise in honeybee numbers.
The study cautioned that an increasing reliance on pollination by wild bees was particularly dangerous given that their health is not being monitored and that too little is being done to protect them.
Dr Stout, director of the Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research, said studies showed wild bees rather than honeybees from managed hives were the biggest pollinators of plants in Ireland.
She said: “The highest visitation rates to flowers were by bumblebees. In fact, in agricultural fields in Ireland, honeybees are very rarely seen — mostly we see a lot of bumblebees, some solitary bees and lots of hoverflies.”
While there are currently 24,000 honeybee colonies or hives in the country, which can produce up to 60,000 bees at the height of the summer, these are mainly used for honey production and are not usually taken to farms for crop pollination.
She said scientists don’t have accurate numbers when it comes to wild bees but it is recognised their numbers have been falling.
She said: “The change from hay making to silage cutting across Ireland has meant a reduction in wild flowers and less food for bees and this, along with increased use of pesticides and other changes in farming practices has meant that wild bees in Ireland have suffered.
“In addition, some really variable weather has affected the bees such as the very cold winter in 2011, the wet summer in 2012 and the long cold spring in 2013.”
She said it is hard to predict the effects of a drastic decline in bee numbers but it could have an alarming affect on the plant life in Ireland.
She said: “It’s hard to say but there could be quite a Doomsday catastrophic impact in terms of changes to natural plant communities.
“Bees are so important for the plant communities which are the basis of the whole food chain. We don’t know how far we are from that and we don’t really understand how far you can go until you reach a tipping point when things sort of collapse.”
She said the Government can adopt bee-friendly policies like growing wild flower strips and planting pollen and nectar plants on Irish farms to help conserve the vital insect.
She said: “In terms of getting the bees back we need lots of flowers for them to feed on and less pesticide use.”
