20 May 2009
I welcome the opportunity to have this debate and am grateful for the support of members from all parties that has enabled it to take place.
As this is biodiversity week, it is appropriate that we talk about a number of the species that play a vital part in ensuring that that biodiversity continues.
It is interesting to note that, tomorrow, the House of Lords will debate exactly the issue that we are about to debate.
As we workers sit here in this latter part of the evening—that is the last pun that I will use today—millions upon millions of honey-bees, bumble-bees and other pollinating insects are going about their work, of which we are a principal beneficiary.
Their work is vital.
They pollinate our flowers, our crops and our fruit.
Two out of every three mouthfuls of food that we eat are reckoned to come from plants that are pollinated by insects. Around 84 per cent of European Union crops are pollinated by insects and 80 per cent of wild flowers depend on insect pollination.
The sad truth is that, despite the fact that millions and millions of insects are currently doing their work, fewer of them are doing so than was previously the case.
The fact that their numbers continue to decline has profound implications.
The decline has gone largely unnoticed by most of us for many years, although many people have argued that we should place the issue higher up the political agenda—accordingly, I welcome the attention that the issue has been getting in recent years.
Although the source is disputed, it is said that Einstein said that if bees go, mankind will follow within four years. That statement focuses the mind wonderfully on the nature of the challenge that we face.
We know that there is a serious decline in bee numbers not just in Scotland, the United Kingdom and Europe but in many other parts of the world.
Honey-bees, bumble-bees and other species are in decline.
That is an issue for all species, as pollination is a complex matter—some insects pollinate some plants but not others, which means that species overlap.
We know that, with the decline in insect numbers, pollination becomes more limited.
If pollination is less complete, a vicious downward cycle will start up: fewer seeds will be produced, which will mean that there will be fewer flowers the following season, which, in turn, will mean that it will be harder for the insects to survive.
Insect-pollinated plants are declining at a faster rate than those that are pollinated by water or wind.
Twenty-seven bumble-bee species are in decline and three are already extinct.
Seven bumble-bee species have declined by more than 50 per cent in the past 25 years and two thirds of moth species and 71 per cent of butterfly species are in long-term decline.
Entire honey-bee hives have collapsed or are in serious decline, the great yellow bumble-bee is now unique to Scotland and the native Scottish black-bee now exists in very few places—one of which is Colonsay.
We do not understand all the reasons why the numbers are declining.
We know about the varroa mite, which is affecting honey-bee populations and has spread rapidly throughout the country. It is now regarded as being endemic, and although there is a treatment for it that is used by many amateur and commercial beehive managers, we know that the parasite is becoming resistant to that treatment.
We will have to consider new forms of treatment, which might mean using the new EU-licensed products that we know exist.
Habitat loss is a significant part of the issue.
I visited Struan apiaries in Conan Bridge last year.
The manager told me about habitat loss—significantly, he used to place his beehives in set-aside land or in field margins that were rich in flowers, but those are now decreasing because of set-aside changes, which has direct implications for his business and for us too, because of the effect it has on pollination.
Road verges are being cut more often at a particular time in the season, which may prevent the creation of, or destroy, nests of bumble-bees and the like.
There are fewer grass meadows than there used to be—indeed, we have fewer gardens than we used to have.
More people—for perfectly understandable reasons—are paving over their gardens or putting gravel down, and growing fewer flowers.
That has implications for the insect and bee populations that those gardens had previously supported.
We need flower-rich habitats in more places.
There is a debate about insecticides and the impact that they have on the insect population.
One dimension of that concerns not only whether insecticides directly kill insects and bees, but what happens at the sub-lethal level.
We do not fully understand the long-term effects of toxicity on those species.
We need to do more to find out about that.
Do we really understand the effects of climate change on invertebrates?
Are they an early indicator—a barometer—of something much more fundamental that is happening in our environment but which we do not yet understand?
Those issues, and the matters that I have just outlined, are some of the reasons why we need more research.
I am pleased that the Scottish Government has, with the UK Government, put more money into research and I hope that in the process of deciding where to focus that research the Government will consult the Bee Farmers Association and the Scottish Bee Association to try to get the priorities right.
I welcome the Government’s invertebrates strategy—it is good to see the Government standing up for invertebrates, if I can put it that way.
I look forward to welcoming the bee strategy in due course.
We need more incentives for farmers to farm, particularly in bee-friendly ways, and we need the Scottish rural development programme to help with that.
We need individuals to do more in their gardens and we need more diagnostic services to examine the bees that are dying and to test them earlier to find out why.
We need to do more to protect the last remnants of certain species in the few communities in Scotland where they still exist—and to protect communities of bees that are native to Scotland.
In Colonsay there is a bid to have a black-bee reserve because it is one of the very few places left in Scotland where the native black-bee exists.
I hope that the Minister for Environment will ensure that Scottish Natural Heritage and her department work closely and urgently to take that forward.
A bee keeper in Easter Ross e-mailed me—and other members, I am sure—to say that there is an army out there and that if we are ready we should take action to help.
The bee keeper said that they may need ammunition and leadership, information and support, and training to know what to do in some circumstances, but that there is a group of people who are willing to help.
I hope that the minister will offer some of that leadership.
I learned on Sunday, while reading a famous Scottish journal, that the acts that we pass in the Parliament are finally affixed with the great seal of Scotland, which I gather is made from beeswax.
I hope that that continues well into the future. I look forward to hearing the contributions of other members to this debate on a very important subject.
