Britain’s backyard beekeepers will get help beating winter bee deaths from an army of 400 government-backed volunteer teachers.
Soaring numbers of people are taking up the hobby amid concern over honey bee decline. But due to challenges from pests and diseases, inexperienced beekeepers are losing more colonies over winter, so better skills are needed.
Now 400 experts across England and Wales are to be trained to teach groups of beekeepers good husbandry as part of a new project under the government’s Healthy Bees Plan. It will be run in partnership with the British Beekeeping Association and the National Diploma of Beekeeping Board (NDBB), and is jointly funded by Defra.
Environment Minister Lord Henley said: “Bees are essential to putting food on our table and worth £200m to Britain every year through pollinating our crops. This training will help the many new beekeepers keep their hives healthy and bees buzzing.”
BBKA President Martin Smith said: “We are delighted to be joining forces with the government to improve the education of the dramatically increasing numbers of new beekeepers.
"We look forward to working with the National Bee Unit to ensure that the band of new trainers have the high quality teaching materials they need to be a viable support to our local associations whose teaching and mentoring resources have become strained to breaking point.”
The National Bee Unit , where government inspectors are based, has found that in 2008/9 14% of colonies died over winter and in 2009/10 16% died.
Total project costs are £310,000 including Defra’s contract of £191,440 up to the end of March 2011, £90,000 from the BBKA and £30,000 from the NDBB.
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