Leatherhead Matters

 Ok, I haven’t a clue what the chart below means except, apparently it explains why the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) screwed up by announcing that global warming is an established trend. Click on the graphic to take you to a boffin’s explanation.

                            How Climate Feedbacks Feed Back

There are just so many variables in trying to model something as complex as global climate change plus, the science of climate modelling is still in the early years of groping for understanding.

The temperature trend which caught the IPCC by surprise is shown below. The climate scientist who put the above chart together says 

Since late 2001, the trend of global surface temperatures has been downward. “Global warming” stopped in 1998; and, though it may resume in future years, the rate of warming is self-evidently less than that which the IPCC had expected, and is very likely to be harmless.

Some politicians (eg. Al Gore) may still finish up with egg all over their face having jumped on the band wagon of global warming.

Honey bees are under threat from pests such as the varroa mite, the hive beetle and other exotic threats. The Varroa destructor mite is a honey bee parasite that feeds much like a tick on the body of a bee. The mites are about the size of a pin head, dark brown in colour and visible on close inspection. The varroa mite (see picture) came to the UK in the ’60’s and is now an endemic pest. It’s believed to be one of the contributory factors to the so called Colony Collapse Disorder in the USA. You can see more pictures of varroa mites on honey bees HERE.

However, to date, the Government has failed to actively respond to these threats.  DEFRA allocates just £192,000/year to bee health research. This has to fund the entire R&D honey bee programme on exotic & statutory pests and diseases.

The Government’s response to date has been warm words but, no action…until this week. DEFRA have just published a consultation document (Government’s version of playing for time) which is tacit acknowledgement of the problem. The DEFRA Consultation Document is on a “Draft Strategy for Protecting & Improving the Health of Honey Bees in England & Wales“.

The Consultation appears to have been in response to a petition at the end of last year to increase funding for research into honey bees. In January, DEFRA played a straight bat and basically said “What’s the problem?”. Perhaps nothing has changed and the consultation will only produce this Government’s favoured response…more regulation! Or, perhaps this time they are serious because, they have noticed that bee keeping has become very trendy in constituencies where they are vulnerable.

If you are a bee keeper, interested in the protection of honey bees or, you just like honey, you may wish to respond to the DEFRA consultation by completing the simple DEFRA response form below.

Official DEFRA Response Form

If you want to know more about bees and also Colony Collapse Disorder in the USA read THIS great post