Protecting Our Native Pollinators

Pollinators play a vital role in mankind’s ability to produce crops, says Julie Moore. So who are they and what can we do to care for them?

- Julie Moore

Since spring, I’ve been watching a myriad of pollinators zip tirelessly from the fruit blossoms, herbs, wild flowers and vegetables in my vegetable plot, providing me with their free pollination services. As a result, I’ve been enjoying bumper harvests.

Seeing such activity makes it hard to realise that a study earlier this year revealed that a third of British wild bees and hoverflies are in decline and, if current trends continue, some species will be lost from Britain altogether. Their traditional habitats of wild flower meadows have virtually disappeared, while climate change, toxic pesticides and disease all make for an unpredictable future for both pollinators and mankind, including our ability to grow food crops.

When we consider ‘pollinators’, most of us automatically think of the honeybee, which is actually not native to northern Europe. In the UK, approximately three-quarters of our native plant species require pollination by insects not just by social and solitary bees, but a range of insects, including hoverflies, moths, butterflies and beetles. As such, our plants have not evolved with honeybees as their main natural pollinators.

If you look closely at your flowers, you’ll quickly see that honeybees have plenty of company. Insect pollination is estimated to contribute more than £650 million a year to our economy, although this could be a huge underestimation if you consider that the valuation does not account for the pollination of fruit and vegetables in our own plots nor the labour costs involved to hand-pollinate commercially grown crops. It may sound far-fetched, but it’s already happening to fruit crops in China! It’s clear that our wild native pollinators play a vital role in our world. Let’s look at some of our native pollinators.

BUMBLEBEES