The Bee Cause

Bees are in trouble. Three of the 25 species of British bumblebee are already extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, some up to 70%, since the 1970s.We want local people to take action by growing bee-friendly flowers (like flowering herbs) and buying local British honey; we also want David Cameron to lead on protecting Bee by creating a national bee action plan - support this call here!

The reasons that bee are in trouble complicated and not clearly understood. To make matters worse, bees have been hit hard by the current long-term drought. Bees are essential to a healthy economy as well as a healthy environment. Without bees and other pollinators, our diet would be dull and less healthy: imagine life without fruit and honey. Pollinating crops artificially would cost UK farmers £1.8 billion a year.

If you want to go a step further than planting wild flowers in your garden to help bees, you could join our campaign to help save the bee. Hackney & Tower Hamlets Friends of the Earth are among 200 local Friends of the Earth groups across the country that are signing up to the Bee Cause.

The aim of the campaign is to get the government to adopt a national Bee Action Plan. To create a buzz around this, local groups will be creating local Bee Action Plans, a set of actions that we hope Hackney Council and local organisations and residents will sign up to, to make Hackney a more bee-friendly place.

If you're already working to help bees, or you'd be interested in helping to draft a local Bee Action Plan, please contact Katherine Pitt.

You can also read our article, 'Bee friendly says Hackney FOE' in the Hackney Citizen.