Hawk Honey, speaking at Wenhaston Commons AGM, shocked me and others there, by warning us: Contrary to popular belief, adding more honeybees is not the answer to pollinator declines. In fact, it may do more harm than good.
Here’s the article he has sent, which describes who the great pollinators are and how the honey bee may be detrimental to them and their food source.
A reminder of Endless Forms, a book recommended to me by my cousin, Bernice, who knows the author.
There may be no insect with a worse reputation than the wasp, and none guarding so many undiscovered wonders. Where bees and ants have long been the darlings of the insect world, wasps are much older, cleverer and more diverse. They are the bee’s evolutionary ancestors – flying 100 million years earlier – and today they are just as essential for the survival of our environment. A bee, ecologist Professor Seirian Sumner argues, is just a wasp that has forgotten how to hunt.“