A talk on "the bee-friendly garden" - the full report

At last week's FOTB AGM
Futures Forum: A talk on "the bee-friendly garden" - at the Friends of the Byes AGM - 6pm Thursday 23rd January
beekeeper Neil Lovesey gave a very practical and quite wonderful talk on bees.
Here is the opening:

The Bee Friendly Garden

Why do we need bees?

If you grow carrots, you have to thank the bees, because without them, you will have no seed next year. Runnerbeans? No beans this year. Salad days are numbered without them. Without bees, and to a lesser extent, butterflies, moths and beetles, the only food crops we would have are those pollinated by the wind. All of the top fruits, apples, pears, raspberries etc, rely on pollinating insects. All the vegetable seeds we buy so cheaply, from beetroot to radishes, beans to lettuces, tomatoes to melons, unless we are to rely on artificially pollinated seed, normally F1 hybrids, we will have none of these crops.  As a plantsman, I propagated our stock vegetatively in order to maintain the correct variety, but many of the annual plants, and apart from the F1 hybrids, most of the seeds we rely on will become a thing of the past. 

It is said that 80% of the worlds food supply depends on bees. Yes, we could benefit from great cucumbers, were it not for the fact that we need fertilsed seed to grow them, but we would loose our tomatoes. 

Vision Group for Sidmouth - Friends of the Byes AGM
Friends of The Byes / Sidmouth BEE Project | Facebook
Futures Forum: Bees
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