News archive: April 2007

America's bees are disappearing. Not in a gradual way, but in a massive, completely unprecedented and shockingly abrupt manner known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). And if the bees die, who is going to pollinate the crops that feed us? When John Chapple, one of London's largest keepers of honeybees, opened his 40 hives after the winter, he was shocked: 23 were empty, seven contained dead bees, and only 10 were unaffected by what seemed to be a mystery plague. Beekeepers are used to diseases sweeping through their colonies, and, nationally, nearly one in seven colonies dies naturally each winter. But this seemed very different to Mr Chapple, who is head of the London Beekeepers Association and has 20 years' experience with the insects and their diseases. "The problem was that most of the bees had just disappeared. It was like the Marie Celeste. There was no chance they had been stolen," he said yesterday. "The ones that were left did not seem to have been attacked by varroa [the tiny parasitical mite that beekeepers have learned to live with since it arrived from Asia 15 years ago]. I really do not know what happened". Mr Chapple's experience has chimed with other beekeepers. "Many colleagues and bee clubs tell me that they are experiencing something similar. The Pinner and Ruislip beekeepers' group told me only this morning that they have lost 50% to 75% of their bees. I don't know what is happening, but the bees are just going," he said. Many British beekeepers fear they are witnessing the start of an alarming phenomenon which is sweeping the US and mainland Europe. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is possibly the most serious disease yet faced by bees. According to the national bee unit, a branch of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, its "symptoms appear to be the total collapse of bee colonies, with a complete absence of bees or only a few remaining in the hive". The unit says no one has any idea what is causing CCD. Theories in the US, where 24 states are affected and losses of 50% to 90% of colonies are being reported, include environmental stresses, malnutrition, unknown pathogens, the use of antibiotics, mites, pesticides and genetically modified crops. Because bees pollinate millions of hectares of fruit trees and crops, the implications for agriculture are enormous. "Approximately 40% of my 2,000 colonies are currently dead and this is the greatest winter mortality I have ever experienced," Gene Brandi, a member of the California State Beekeepers Association, told the US Congress recently. In Spain, thousands of colonies are said to have been lost, and up to 40% of Swiss bees are reported to have disappeared or died in the past year. Heavy losses have also been reported in Portugal, Italy and Greece. Government bee inspectors met yesterday, but Mike Brown, head of the national bee unit based in York, reported no signs of CCD in Britain. "There is no evidence in the UK right now of colony collapse disorder," he said in a statement. "The majority of inspectors said that they can put the current mortalities in honeybee populations around the UK down to varroa or varroasis." "I just don't know where they get their information," said Mr Chapple. "They took away some of my bees but I have heard nothing. All I know that something is very wrong with our bees." Article by John Vidal, environment editor of The Guardian UK, April 12, 2007

This a tale of two Hastings. There is New Hastings, with a seafront rocking with amusement arcades, chippies, tattoo parlours and shops selling rock candy. And there is Old Hastings, quiet, quaint, higgledy-piggledy in a pretty, orderly kind of way, with secondhand book shops, antique shops and Judges. The front of Judges has a slightly saggy look, the way old shops should. The name leaps out of a sky-blue fascia, and the windows are filled with fat eccles cakes, curly-whirly Chelsea buns, doughnuts, Viennese hearts, pink meringue pigs, coffee and walnut cakes, apple turnovers and Easter choccies. Green & Black's Easter choccies, to be precise. I had never thought of Craig Sams as a curly-whirly man. He was the magus of macrobiotics, the fellow who years ago led the organic healthfood charge with Whole Earth Foods, and who persuaded the nation that you could eat chocolate and feel good about it, so long as the chocolate was Green & Black's. Sams stood down from most of his corporate responsibilities a few years ago, to cultivate his kitchen garden in East Sussex and to become a big cheese in the Soil Association. But the entrepreneurial spirit runs deep, because two years ago, supported by his wife, Josephine, he took over Judges, a bakery and tea shop in Hastings with a good local reputation, and turned it into ... what? Well, if I didn't think the couple might find the description objectionable, I'd say a mini-supermarket devoted to things organic. Besides the breads and pastries, it sells an intoxicating jumble of goodies. There's a small, well-chosen cheese section, a mini-meat section, fruit and veg in baskets, coffee from the Monmouth Coffee Shop, apple juice from Oakwood Farm, Steenbergs spices and shelf after shelf of packets, pots and packages, all tip-top organic - "2,000 altogether," says Craig, "more than Tesco or Sainsbury's. And as much as possible is produced locally." "And we've tasted every one of them," says Jo. "If it doesn't taste good, it doesn't go on the shelves" It makes money, too - "more money per square metre than Sainsbury's," says Craig, dryly. When they took over Judges, the couple didn't announce that everything would be organic, because they didn't want to scare off the regulars. "We let people get hooked, then we told them," Craig says. He is particularly proud of his eclectic mix of clientele. It's not just well-heeled weekenders stocking up on premium products. "We get fishermen, workmen, little old ladies, and first thing in the morning the street's lined with builders' vans collecting sandwiches for lunch." Craig is also working on links to schools and a primary care trust. Ethical principles run as strong in the Sams family as entrepreneurial ones. Could Judges be a model for other shops of this kind? Put it this way, there was a man from the Soil Association who had come to see how it all worked, and he was filling a basket at the same time. Judges Bakery 51 High Street, Hastings, East Sussex, 01424 722588 Article by Matthew Fort for The Guardian UK, April 7, 2007

Scientists have developed a test that can detect if unscrupulous traders are trying to pass off non-organic fruit and vegetables as organic to boost their profits. The chemical test relies on identifying a "nitrogen signature" that is left in food by the conventional fertilisers used in intensive farming. Organic food, which is a £15 billion global market, is currently regulated by a system of certification and inspection. Simon Kelly, of the University of East Anglia, said that the test, reported by his team in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, could provide extra evidence when foul play was suspected. "When the test has been made more reliable then we may get to the stage where it can be used routinely in addition to the organic certification system," he said. Article by Roger Highfield for The Daily Telegraph UK, April 9, 2007

As the supply of cheap fuel dwindles, organic farmers in Wales prepare the rural town of Lampeter for 'energy descent' There is, as the ads say, no Plan B. The age of cheap oil is drawing to a close, climate change already threatens, and politicians dither. But the people of Lampeter, a small community in the middle of rural Wales, gathered together earlier this week to mobilise for a new war effort. They decided to plan their "energy descent". It was in fact the biggest public meeting in Lampeter anyone could remember. West Wales has a long tradition of alternative living, but the scale of this was different. More than 450 people filed into the hall in a place where the total population is just 4,000. They had come to turn themselves into a Transition Town - one of a rapidly growing network of places that have decided not to wait for government action, but to prepare for life after oil on their own. First, the coordinator of the Transition Town movement, Rob Hopkins, told them how urgent the crisis is. Hopkins, who helped create the earliest Transition Towns in Kinsale, Ireland, and Totnes, Cornwall, and advises the 20 or so others that have signed up, describes himself as an early topper. He's one of those who think that in the next five years we will have reached peak oil - the point at which half the world's oil reserves have been used up. After that production goes into irreversible and rapid decline and our main source of energy starts running out. Since we have not so far identified another viable energy source to replace it, the only rational response, he said, is to plan our energy descent. "Life after oil will have to look very different." The world, he explained, divides into early toppers and late toppers. The early toppers, made up largely of former industry geolo