Extra help for honey bees

SCOTLAND'S honey bees had the Royal Highland Show buzzing yesterday when Richard Lochhead, the rural affairs minister, announced the latest in a series of initiatives to ensure their protection.

A bid for funding for a Bee Health Initiative under the Rural Tayside Leader Programme has been successful. The 183,000 will be used by Scottish Bee Services to create a frame sterilisation plant in Perthshire where 60 per cent of Scotland's honey is produced.

The grant will also support a Tayside Pollination Awareness Initiative, which aims to improve knowledge of pollen and nectar crops.

Over the next three years, 50,000 has been committed to support BeeBase, a national database that provides bee-keepers with information on the activities of the National Bee Unit, legislation, pests and disease recognition and control, interactive maps, current research areas and keys contacts.

Earlier in the week, the Scottish Government revealed it has also contributed 500,000 towards a UK-wide 10 million research programme into pollinators. The nine successful projects were announced on Monday and include 1.8m for a project based at Dundee University looking at the impact of pesticides.

The moves have been made following a series of disastrous years for the honey industry, with a number of diseases such as varroa mite and foulbrood sweeping through hives

Lochhead said honey bees were an essential part of agriculture in Scotland, adding: "They play an extremely important role in pollinating crops and plants such as the 68m soft fruit industry.

"We are committed to supporting the beekeeping community to ensure that Scotland has a sustainable and healthy population of honey bees over the next ten years.

"The strategy is being backed up by a number of other measures, such as an increase in the number of bee inspectors, the establishment of a database for Scottish beekeepers and investment in research programmes."