From Mary Venturini.
WHAT is happening to our honeybees? I am not a very experienced beekeeper, as I have only had one hive for two seasons, but I knew enough to realise that this Easter something was wrong with my colony.

Instead of being out and busy in the fields early each morning there wasn’t a sight of a bee until mid-afternoon, when the sun shone directly on the entrance to their hive. Then they would venture out looking rather listless and heave themselves into the air.

On their return, with pollen on their hind legs, they would often misjudge the distance to the hive entrance, either flying too high and hitting the sides of the hive or too low and tumbling into the grass below. They looked as though they had lost their balance, or had been intoxicated by something very strong.

My bee-keeping guru, who has taught me everything I know, shook his head when he saw the bees.

We lifted the roof and peered into the upper frames of the hive. A few bees were staggering along the glass top, losing their balance every now and then. Others were hyperactive, circling aimlessly without a sense of direction. Their precision and their sense of purpose, so evident last summer, had vanished.

What to do? We decided not to disturb them as it was still cold so, making sure they had enough food, we replaced the roof and hoped that nature would take its course.
I went off for the weekend and when I return I hurried to check the hive. There were a few listless creatures crawling around the entrance. But across the opening to the hive a spider had spun its web; not a good omen I thought. Would a sensible spider place a web across what should be a busy and dangerous launching pad?

My hope was fading fast and the next day I decided to open the hive. Encouraged by an article about bees in the Sunday Telegraph I hoped at best to find a small nucleus clustering around the queen, perhaps a bit weak from a hard winter, but alive. At worst I thought I would find them dead, stuck to the frames or covering the floor of the hive. Nothing had prepared me for what I saw; a completely empty hive, not a bee (alive or dead) in sight.

I picked out the frames one by one; nothing. I went down into the brood chamber, something I had never done on my own before; nothing. They had simply vanished, leaving quite a bit of honey behind.

So my bees were not suffering from hunger or deformed wings, a problem that has hit many hives in Jersey this year, nor from the dreaded varroa mite, which clings to the bees and sucks them dry. Mine had simply vanished. What had happened? Is mine a case of the mysterious colony collapse disorder?

No-one is quite sure what causes CCD, but in France, Germany and Italy beekeepers have discovered that a process for coating seeds with insecticides causes bees to lose direction and eventually disappear, leaving behind empty hives. I am therefore wondering whether something used in Jersey fields and gardens is having the same effect. Are potatoes being sprayed with new toxins that are harmful to bees? Is sweet corn (maize) being grown in a different way?

Insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, act on the central nervous system of insects and are known to affect honeybees. They lose their sense of direction and fail to return to the hive. These insecticides were banned in France in the late 1990s, in Germany in 2008 and in Italy in 2009, where the ban has just been extended for another year.

Although the scientific research is not yet conclusive there is evidence that hives have stopped collapsing and that bee colonies are on the increase again. Imidacloprid is the most widely used of the neonicotinoids and is applied to cereals, grains, potatoes, turf, lawns and vegetables.

Is this, or are any of the following well known neonicotinoids, being used in Jersey: acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, thiacloprid, thiamethoxam?
Perhaps it is time that farmers and beekeepers in the Island got together to find out. Farmers can’t do without our bees and we can’t do without our honey.