Some strange behaviour seen in our street this morning.  Our front gardens are at about elbow height when you are on the pavement, which lends itself to nature observation while walking to the post box.

There’s a slightly tatty house up the road, with an uncut bit of grass out front which is full of primroses, violets, and grape hyacinth (known a little uglies in our house) it looks lovely and we have concerns that when the house is done up the garden will get paved over like its neighbours. So anyway: A noticed a bumble bee making free with a rather small violet, and making a bit of a meal of it. There were a few honey bees about, and two of them zoomed over and watched the bumble like those little drone camera things you see in spy movies. Then they took it in turn to land on the bumble’s back, until one of them literally pulled it off the violet. The bumble was unimpressed and went straight back to the violet, so they did it again, then as the bumble clambered back once more to its interrupted feast one of the honeybees went off in a huff while the other went back to its spy surveillance.  Very odd.

So what? Well – there is a demo on Friday to try to persuade the government not to block the EU’s aim to ban a pesticide which is destroying the bee population at an alarming rate. No bees means no fruit and veg getting fertilised; potentially in the extreme, no plants which eventually means no oxygen. We need to keep an eye on our bees and help them survive.

Information from 38 Degrees:

Bulgaria had been lining up alongside the UK to block a ban on these pesticides. But yesterday, after beekeepers from across the nation marched through the capital, Bulgaria’s minister for agriculture, Ivan Stankov, changed his mind. Bulgaria will now vote for a ban.
We need Owen Paterson, our own environment minister, to follow suit.
So, this Friday 38 Degrees is teaming up with a whole host of other organisations to march on parliament and stage our very own March of the Beekeepers.
38 Degrees members will be meeting at:
10:30am this Friday 26th April
The statue of Churchill in Parliament Square, London.
You don’t have to be a beekeeper! You can come dressed as one, or as a bee or just come as yourself: bring fruit, flowers, friends and big smiles.
We’re joining forces with Avaaz, Buglife, Environmental Justice Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Pesticide Action Network UK, RSPB, and the Soil Association to show the environment minister how important the protection of our bees is to us.