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I can say that my bees are fine. Gathering a lot of honey. Winter before this I lost 9 out of 10 hives. Cheers.

PS: there are a lot of bee forums on the net. Beesource.com is perhaps the best. You can find there a lot of info if you are interested in bees.

My OH has expressed an interest in Bees Have to say it is something I don't care for myself... I'd much rather have pigs, but then pigs don't make honey then again... you get awfully small sausages from bees

Anywhoos.... We have honey bees buzzing around our garden this year, it is the first time I have ever seen them. We also have loads of Bumble bees, last year we had a nest of them under the compost bins but I think there are more of them this year.

I can't speak to the world situation, but there's definately more bees in my garden this year than last.

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But it seems to be national bee swarm week... (or this is what I find when I type bees into google news)

http://www.berrowsjournal.co.uk/news/lo ... bee_swarm/

http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/conte ... 3A24%3A850

http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/4 ... ouncillor/

http://www.teletext.co.uk/regionalnews/ ... +park.aspx

Favourite quote from the last story is...

A spokeswoman for Lincoln City Council said: "It happens from time to time, at this time of year. We advise people not to go anywhere near the swarm."

Really, you don't say?

I'd also recommend http://www.biobees.com as an invaluable source for anyone wanting to take up natural beekeeping. We've found so much help both on the main site and forum, including building a hive, for peanuts and how best to let the bees look after themselves. I'm certainly no expert, as we only installed our bees a couple of weeks ago, but we'll definitely be building a couple of more hives soon. If you are wary of getting bees here's a blog of our experience. http://growveg.info/viewtopic.php?f=3757&t=15083

Again can't comment on the world situation but from my own experience
Out of 2 of my local beekeepers one lost 3 out of 14 hives last winter and the other lost 10 out of 10 (both beekeepers of decades standing). Friends hive in wales was going well when we opened it up, the supers already felt quite heavy, and I saw a HUGE swarm of bees last Saturday (unfortuneatly literally in the very top branch of a very tall oak tree ) and they declined the offer of a bait hive I sited closeby and buzzed off to pastures new.

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Thanks for the links. My OH has just acquired 2 second hand hives from a local bee keeper who's offered to help him with his bee keeping activities. Unfortunately he got them just in time for everyone to run out of nuclei! So hoping for a swarm to come by soon. There are definitely a lot more bees in our garden this year than there were last so here's hoping.

Lynne

Having just been on a trip to England I can assure you there are as many bugs splattered on our car as there were 20 or more years ago!

Tons of bees in my garden too, and there were tons in my Mum's garden in Somerset. I wouldn't be aware of any of these stories about disappearing bees or sparrows if I didn't read newspapers or forums discussing it. No decline round here. In fact I had to leave my purple sprouting broccoli in place until the flowers were nearly over because they were absolutely swarming with bees and I didn't have the heart to take them away - and I enjoyed the buzzing noise for company whilst I hoed my veg patch.

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That's as may be but some or even many people still have as many sparrows, bees or whatever in their gardens as they ever did, which is a positive thing and something that cannot be refuted by anybody's statistics. And the decline of sparrows in London can't be caused by the buildings! I am well aware of the decline in certain bird species as I am aware of certain other species which are on the up!

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I live in la France profonde and when I visit England I go to the countryside, so no I'm not seeing any Victorian or Georgian avenues and I am not disputing what (they say) is happening elsewhere in the world. I am saying that what I see cannot be refuted. And what I see is good! So it is not all doom and gloom.

Last year we had few bees (bumble and honey) in our garden - this year we have freakin' hundreds... bumble and honey. They are wild, no one round here keeps them maybe the bee thing was a blip?

I watched a little of that program about the bees being taken thousands of miles in America to be used to pollinate fruit.

I think I would have died off if I was forced to travel thousands of miles several times a year and forced to live off a mono-culture diet, then carted off again, taken another 5000 miles to eat a completely different mono-culture food stuff Not that I know anything about insects but it is clearly not natural.