Why the great buzz about bees?

Our favourite insect is in decline. But, says Ian Douglas, we shouldn't ignore other, less charming, pollinators that play an equal role in our food production.

Ian Douglas at work in happier times: he replaced his queen this spring but he has seen his colony wiped out Photo: Philip Hollis

As I worked my way through the frames of my beehive this spring, it soon became clear that something was wrong. The bees had not eaten enough of the honey stores they had accumulated last summer and, while there were still a good number of them, they seemed a little aggressive and lacking in direction.

After a few more visits to the hive, which I keep on some allotments in Hampstead, north London, it became clear that the queen was missing, probably killed by the cold snows of December and January. Honeybees suffer from a wide range of pests and diseases, but in her case I'm sure it was just the cold and her age. Queens live for three to five years, much longer than the four or five weeks of toil allotted to a worker bee in summer, but we all go in the end.

A new one arrived in the post from a Gloucestershire breeder, sealed in a tiny plastic cage with a lump of sugar and a few attendant workers to keep her going on her journey.

She was introduced as gently as possible to the remaining workers, but to no avail. The old bees, set in their ways and reluctant to change, couldn't accept a new leader and rejected her, even though it meant their numbers would dwindle to nothing. I'm now looking for a fresh new colony or I shall be without bees to keep, which is a sad situation.

Sad it might be, but it's a story familiar to every beekeeper, especially in recent years. The winter of 2007-08 was disastrous, with more than 30 per cent of colonies failing to reach the spring. There are always some losses (plan on one in 10 of your hives being empty come March, old beekeepers tell young ones), but intrepid groups of bees split away from their parent colonies and form new ones, boosting the numbers. This year 18 per cent died off nationally, which is much better than it has been and offers hope for future honey supplies and, most importantly, pollination, but it's still low.

Yesterday, we learnt that the decline of bees and other pollinating insects could seriously affect crop production in this country – the total loss of insect pollinators would cost Britain up to £440 million a year. Such is the concern that a £10 million research project, the Insect Pollinators Initiative, is to examine the ecology of pollinating insects in the hope that biodiversity and the natural pollination of crops can be protected.

We look closely at honeybees because people like me form deep attachments to our hives and find it difficult to stop talking about them, forming a vocal pressure group for their conservation. The news from the hives is improving but the bumblebee nests, complexes of waxy clay-like cups and balls about the size of a small loaf of bread, are still at serious risk. A colony of small, agile, brownish honeybees might contain 60,000 bees at its peak, but big, slow, furry, brightly striped bumblebees hang together in groups of only a few hundred. Fully 70 per cent of the flowering plants that bumblebees rely on are in decline. And hoverflies, solitary bees, butterflies and moths might be in equal need of our care.

I say "might" because when it comes to the importance of pollinator diversity, we're in that most important scientific position: the questioning phase. Professor Andrew Watkinson, director of the Living with Environmental Change programme, who speaks on behalf of the funding partners for the Insect Pollinators Initiative, is under no illusion that he knows everything already.

"What one wants to know is how important the different species are," he says. "How important are the hoverflies compared with the bumblebees or butterflies? What flowering plant resources are important and how much habitat is actually necessary?

"One of the amazing things is that we don't know how important the different species are. Some studies say that honeybees contribute 10 per cent, some say more. We know that bumblebees are very important, as are hoverflies. There are more than 20 species of bumblebee in Britain, and several of them are causing concern. Three are already extinct. Some species are doing OK, and we don't understand what's making the difference."

I said I was quite surprised that we didn't know all of this already, that this research was only being carried out now. "It is surprising that we don't know," says Prof Watkinson. "At the beginning of my career there was a feeling that there was a surplus of pollinators, but that's no longer the case. We're asking the question: do we have enough pollinators to ensure food production?"

The research programme consists of nine projects. Land use, pesticides, disease and nutrition will be examined, both in the countryside and in towns. In relation to honeybees, it's unclear whether disease or the decline in habitats is the bigger problem. "If we had better habitats, would the diseases be less important, or if we could get on top of the diseases, would we be able to get by with smaller habitats?"

Bees are still the focus of a lot of the activity, but that's combined with wider questions about the way our food grows and which species make it happen. As Jane Memmott, professor of ecology at Bristol University's School of Biological Sciences, says: "There are an awful lot of other critters out there apart from bees."

At an urban plot that she monitors, she has found 75 species of pollinator, of which only 17 are bees. Even on heathlands in the New Forest, another site she studies, no more than half of the pollinators are bees. We lack data on the other pollinators, not least because "bees are charismatic in a way that small flies aren't".

The importance of caring for bees is one of the easiest sells in the insect world. They give us delicious honey, their social structure is endlessly fascinating and they're unlikely to sting you unless provoked, so they have a good image. When I tell people I keep bees, they lean in with concerned looks on their faces and tell me that they're planting borage to tempt them into their gardens.

Bumblebees, too, furry and gentle with their low soothing hum, are seen as a benevolent garden presence that should be encouraged. Carpenter, leafcutter and masonry bees benefit from the positive image of honeybees and bumblebees but many of the other 250 pollinator species in decline are less well loved. Few people like hoverflies or moths, but Prof Watkinson's research might well show that they are as vital to our farms, parks and flowerbeds as my striped buzzing charges.

I'm currently helping to judge an architecture competition, Beyond the Hive, for which five insect houses have been constructed in London parks to encourage insects and invertebrates. Lacewings and ladybirds, earwigs and spiders as well as pollinating beasts such as bumblebees and Mother Shipton moths will be accommodated, providing a boost for surrounding wildlife and plants. The earwigs and moths might make you shudder, but it could be that we're lost without them.

I used to be one of those people who would wave his arms at picnics whenever an insect that might sting me flew past, but I've come to love bees. After just a few years of beekeeping they run across my hands and fly around me in circles, trying to work out if I'm a threat to the hive, but in the end, they leave me alone to see to their needs.

As my role is, eventually, to steal their surplus food, I suppose I could be seen as an enemy, but their industry and energy charm me and the idea of a world without bees seems to me a terrible one, pollination crisis or not. Learning to love the other species in Prof Memmott's patch of land might be difficult, but I'm sure we can manage it.