Vegan honey the future to save bees on the planet
London - Manchester, one of the UK’s biggest northern cities, bees can be seen everywhere. Not just in real life, in parks and gardens.
Adopted as the city’s emblem more than a century ago, the humble worker bee which is the smallest of all honey bees and is always female is seen by many Mancunians as representative of their key values.
The city of Manchester isn’t alone. But fast forward to 2022, and people globally have a special relationship with bees as they need to survive.
New Zealand is losing bee colonies by the thousands and beekeepers warn bees may soon become endangered without human intervention.
The latest figures released by the Ministry for Primary Industries show New Zealand has lost over 90,000 bee colonies over the last two winter seasons.
Varroa mite infestation and toxic exposures are among the list as suspected causes. Middle South Island bees are suffering New Zealand's highest rate of colony loss.
Bees are responsible for pollinating the food supply. In fact, one in every three bites of food we take can be attributed to bees. They offer invaluable support to ecosystems, helping plants and trees grow. In Europe, bees pollinate around 80 percent of wildflowers.
But bees are in decline. And, despite how much we have always revered them, most of that is humanity’s fault, such as rural use of pesticides.
In 2012, first-of-its-kind research found pesticides were causing a serious decline of honey bees around the world. It’s not surprising: many of the chemicals are designed to kill insects including bees.
Ten years on, pesticides are still presenting a huge problem for bees. Earlier this month, a University of Oxford study found they impact bee nervous systems.
While people love honey, the global market is worth more than $8 billion, bees need to produce it for themselves: it provides them with a valuable source of nutrition throughout the winter.
But there is a way to have honey without taking it from the bees. Vegan honey is becoming more widely available.
Lisa was born in Auckland at the start of the 1970s, living in a small campsite community on the North Shore called Browns Bay. She spent a significant part of her life with her grandparents, often hanging out at the beaches. Lisa has many happy memories from those days at Browns Bay beach, where fish were plentiful on the point and the ocean was rich in seaweed. She played in the water for hours, going home totally “sun-kissed.” “An adorable time to grow up,” Lisa tells me.
Lisa enjoyed many sports; she was a keen tennis player and netballer, playing in the top teams for her age right up until the family moved to Wellington. Lisa was fifteen years old, which unfortunately marked the end of her sporting career. Local teams were well established in Wellington, and her attention was drawn elsewhere.