You’ve probably heard by now that the British bee population is in quite a shocking decline. Since 1900 we’ve lost more than 20 species of bee, and more than a quarter of the remaining 267 species are under threat.
If you like cotton, tomatoes, strawberries, apples, cider, or a nice gin & tonic, you have a vested interest in keeping the bees around. Bees pollinate 75% of the world’s main crops. Mankind wouldn’t necessarily go hungry without them, but we’d be reduced to whatever we could prepare from self and wind-pollinated crops. That means our diets would be as bland and uninteresting as a weekend licking a wall. Think pasta, porridge, rice – without delicious bee-pollinated treats like almonds or cherries or jam. Bakewell tarts would be especially rubbish.
We, the human race, don’t strictly need the bees to pollinate for us, though. We could do it by hand, but it would be a hellishly expensive option when the bees are kind enough to do it for free. In the UK alone, hand-pollinating crops by hand would cost over £1.8bn per year, according to a University of Reading study. Hand-pollination of crops is already a necessity in parts of India and China, where excessive use of pesticides has led to bees retiring their services.
But luckily, in response to the decline in bee health, we can now reach for the mantra of the digital age: “There’s an app for that.”
Yes. This is how we live now. There is an app for helping save the bee population.
How does it work?
It starts with looking for bees. Which is a more difficult task than it should be. The fact that people at Friends of the Earth felt the need to email me a list of places I might spot some winged pollinators says a lot. Never has Eddie Izzard’s “covered in bees” routine seemed so dated.
When you see a bee, take note of what it looked like and open the Bee Count app and click the large “Seen a bee?” button. You choose from nine pictures to indicate which type of bee you think you saw. Then you choose a habitat: rural, urban or suburban, and the type of place you saw it. There’s a drop-down menu with suggestions like garden, park, school grounds, roadside, and allotment. Then you choose the county you’re in and submit.
The data you submit will be contributed to the National Biodiversity Network, which will then be used by experts investigating the plight and conservation of bees – as yet, there is no picture of bee health in the UK, and no reliable monitoring system for wild bees. Since the government is tasked with drawing up a national bee action plan, this is data they desperately need.
My own verdict – the minus points
- Collecting data is usually a job for scientists, not lay people who could be mistaken or lying about the bees they’ve seen. Relying on the public to gather data seems, at best, a little too trusting and at worst, a plan that will yield qualitative data that’s almost totally unreliable.
- Let’s not forget the scope for unreliable quantitative data – surely different people could count the same bee twice? And conversely, no data in a particular area does not equal no bees in that area.
- There are only nine species of bee on the app and “others”, which leaves a lot of room for uncertainty given that there are 267 species of bee in the UK.
- It’s awkward when someone stomps into their front garden demanding to know what you’re doing and all you can think to say is, “I’m looking for bees, and so should you be.”
And the plus points
- It’s free.
- It’s a great learning resource. My knowledge of bees, like most people’s, was limited to the honey bee, so it was great to learn a little about the various other species that put mustard, cashews, broccoli and coriander in my cupboards.
- It’s a visually lovely app that should also appeal to kids. The cartoon bees buzzing around the “loading” graphic is a nice touch.
- One of the biggest threats to bees is the disappearance of their food and nesting sites – 97% of wildflower meadow habitats have been lost in the past 60 years – which is why it’s great that the app includes “bee tips” for what more you could be doing to protect and help bees aside from downloading an app. Such tips include planting fragrant flowers that attract bees, starting a “bee cafe” (pollinator plants for “hungry bees”) or building a “bee hotel” (using twigs and cardboard tubes to build shelter for homeless bees).
- They encourage further action in several places – for example, your app download gets you a B&Q voucher for £2 off a “perfect for pollinators” lavender plant until the end of June.
- If you’re thirsty for more bee education, you could put that £2 you saved towards a bee poster with 15 species, which you can get if you make a £2 donation to Friends of the Earth via the app.
- If you don’t have a smartphone, you can still join in the bee count on the Great British Bee Count website.
- Hopefully, it will bring the issue to the forefront of people’s minds.
- And if it’s popular with the public, there’s always the chance it will encourage the government to get moving on the National Pollinator Strategy for protecting bees and other pollinators.
- There’s a countdown screen that says “81 days left to add the bees you see”, since summer (particularly June) is the height of the bee season. I like this approach, because I respond well to deadlines.
- There’s also a rolling count of how many bees have been recorded so far, which I think makes you feel like you’re part of something, and contributing to it in a visible way.
It’s more a way to raise awareness and education of the bee problem than a way to usefully crowdsource scientific data, but overall this app is fun, educational and a way of nudging the government towards positive action on bees. It’s also a lovely excuse for a summer of bee-watching with the family, and can only help in the quest to keep Bakewell tarts on the shelves.
You can download the free Great British Bee Count app at App Store and Google Play or record sightings at www.greatbritishbeecount.com. The Great British Bee Count results will be published in autumn.