-And actually they are proper bees. How did you find them be there?
-So... Well, essentially it's the h* so these small pinched waist that you can see all of these bees have that.
-They are very particular by their figure bees, don't they?
-Oh, the waist. They do a lot of flying around, burning a lot of calories. And they go out and they collect pollen and nectar served as vegetarian, whereas their closest relatives, wasps, they are very often carnivorous. And when it comes to crop pollination, these are the unsound heroes of pollination world. Honeybees do make a contribution, but actually it's the wild bees particularly, they doing the most of the work. So for instance in the UK, think about the huge areas of royal s*, beans, and apple crops, also all sorts of fruit we have, we've only got enough honeybees to pollinate an absolute maximum of a third. So who does the rest? It's these guys. They work so hard to ensure that we get everything pollinated, not just crops, but all our wild flowers.
-Did these bees suffer from varroa?
-They don't suffer from varroa, but these guys are in real trouble, as well.
-So you are saying even if we sorted out the varroa problem, we still have a major issue on our hands?
-Absolutely.
The honeybee and hundreds of other species are rolled in decline. But those other species don't suffer from the varroa might.
-There's no doubt that the varroa is lethal and it spread across the global over the past 50 years. It resulted in the death of billions of honeybees. In some countries, including the United States, it's been linked to the disappearance of entire colonies, what they call colony collapse disorder. Here in Britain though, it's a rather different story. First start, varroa only affects honeybees not wild bees. And they've been in decline here as well for some time. And crucially it only arrived here about 20 years ago. And we know our bees have been dying off for much longer than that. So while it's true that varroa has put an added strain on the honeybees, the evidence would indicate that it is not responsible for the whole problem.
