What are we doing to protect bees?

Michael J Ssali

Honey bees are important to us for the honey they provide and for the pollination of our crops. However, according to the 2008 Livestock Census Report of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), only 2.7 per cent of all households in Uganda owned beehives as of 2008. 
The estimated total number of beehives in Uganda as of 2008 was 0.75 million.

Northern Uganda had the highest number of beehives estimated to be 0.30 million while Buganda region had the least number of beehives estimated to be 0.059 million.
The big worry is that bee populations are on the decline, which has resulted in a controversy as to why they are disappearing. It is widely said that mindless usage of pesticides has contributed to their reduction.
 
However, Henry I Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, who is also a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, is of the view that pesticides should not be part of the explanation for the decline of honey bees, according to an article he has authored in the digital newsletter “Genetic Literacy Project” titled: “Wild bees on the decline? Lack of evidence challenges popular environmentalist narrative” dated December 12, 2019. In the article, he refers to decades of research, which demonstrated that the principal threat to bees is the Varroa destructor mites and RNA viruses and other victors.

 He goes on to give the example of Australia where pesticides are widely used but the bees are not dying due to the absence of the Varroa mites in that country.
Miller further says that especially in America, the bees naturally live in deserts and very far from farmed crops where pesticides are applied yet even there the bee populations are declining. 

He says: “The declines observed in individual wild bee species have been ascribed to three causes: disease, habitat loss and climate change — not pesticides.”
Urbanisation and human settlement in formerly forested land where bees used to live is clearly one of the causes of the disappearance of honey bees.
When we cut down forests, we destroy the natural habitat of bees and we drive them away.
Mr Michael Ssali is a veteran journalist, 
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