David Glick - 50 Ways to F**k the Planet

Enthralled with its immutable sense of progress, humanity seems to have forgotten that sometimes it’s the little things that matter most. Don’t make the same mistake. While you must be prepared to battle against Greenpeace and outperform Hugh Hefner, make sure you don’t forget that little Don Juan, the bee. At the start of the twenty-first century, civilization finds itself dependent on this single insect. One in every three tablespoons of food derives directly from the pollinating prowess of the humble honeybee, with supermarkets gleefully cashing £50 billion worth of produce a year. So long as it’s flogged by the kilo, chances are that the honeybee’s enviable powers of fertilization have played a part. Shop shelves would look very different in a world devoid of the services of Apis mellifera. Hundreds of vital crops and cereals would wither. Fruit and veg staples would fade away. There’ll be no more worrying about getting your five a day then! At last, gherkin-free burgers!

Entomologists (insect nerds) warn that society has become way too reliant on the honeybee. Behind the sophisticated production lines of the world’s great supermarkets, the truth is that the security of the food supply lies squarely on the honeybee’s busy shoulders. Surely then, all you need do is shoulder the bees out of existence and hey presto, you’ve delivered a deadly sting to humanity. But surely these valuable creatures are under constant MI5 protection? Don’t be ridiculous!

As yet you can only dream about Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious ailment that has performed such a sterling job vanquishing America’s bee population. It is a strange and abrupt disease that persuades millions of bees to abandon their queen and fly off to certain suicide. Your real money-shot enlists the services of a parasite no larger than a full stop. The size of the varroa mite belies a voracious appetite. Once its jaws are clamped to a bee’s stomach, it gorges upon the blood until the host’s immune system can take no more. Predictions suggest that the varroa mite is able to cause a complete species ‘die-out’ in as little as a decade. Ostensibly, it is the Aids equivalent for bees. Honeybees are drained in hours. Hives collapse in days. With this little buddy, your job is done in a matter of weeks. Thankfully there’s no bee equivalent to the condom. No Red Cross setting up clinics in the meadows. The way ahead is clear. Facilitate varroa’s global spread and you’ve found the fastest route to being bee-free. In theory, nothing should stop every colony succumbing to these marauding blighters. In time, earth’s long-term food supply will be jeopardized, plunging the planet into civic strife and conflict.

At the start of 2008, the softly-spoken types of the British Beekeepers Association decided they could take no more. Barely able to hide their hysteria, its leaders warned ministers that Britain risked ‘calamitous’ economic and environmental hardship if the honeybee disappeared. They were not alone in their squawking. Supermarket executives agitated privately over the future fate of this bumbling insect. Apparently, safeguarding a tiny creature vital for global cereal and fruit production falls far beyond their wiles. With one of the core underpinning elements of their business at risk, they wait nervously for the first complaints to trickle in – inadequate pollination produces the misshapen, shrivelled food that so horrifies their customers.

When varroa began ravaging Britain’s hives during the Nineties, the pesticide pyrethoid was promptly administered to halt the destruction. Its use came with a strict health warning over effectiveness: ministers were told the measures would triumph for a finite period only. As it transpired, only a handful of years. After that varroa mites would become immune to man-made chemicals. And so, funding was granted to develop a biological defence that would safeguard food supplies in the future.

Dr Brenda Ball, the world’s foremost expert on varroa, led a team of scientists at the Rothamsted Research Institution in Hertfordshire. There was a troubling period when it seemed that, finally, a cure for varroa might be on the horizon. Significant progress was underway when, in the spring of 2006, the government withdrew financial support. Ball’s team became redundant. Her pioneering work to protect nature’s pollinator remains incomplete to this day. Within months of funding being terminated, the minister for sustainable farming and food hailed an ‘environmentally-friendly’ initiative to encourage more British-produced fruit and vegetables. No reference was made to the fact that without the honeybee this would prove largely impossible. His omission provides a salutary, but inspirational lesson to those bent on environmental Armageddon: you can often do a lot worse than put your faith in the elected few.

The government has handed out yet another ‘proceed to go’ card on your journey towards bee obliteration. The bee inspection service, conceived to monitor early signs of infection in hives, suddenly found its funding halved. Research on protecting the honeybee currently stands at around £200,000, a fiftieth of their pollinating value to the economy. Matters came to a head during a fraught meeting in November 2007 between beekeepers and government officials, when the farming minister Lord Rooker confessed that he too knew the bleeding obvious. ‘If we do not do anything, the chances are in ten years’ time we will not have any honeybees,’ he said. Despite this, the British Beekeepers Association claims that funding continues to be denied. It seems bees are a victim of classic British stoicism. Admitting there is a problem remains a far cry from actually doing anything about it.

Every other international attempt to quash varroa has yet to yield an answer. Every new pesticide leads only to a new resistance. The parasite is always one step ahead. And so, its spread continues apace. In London, the first round of colony inspections during 2008 found all of the bees were dead. Few are the places left untouched by its blood-thirsty proboscis. China has submitted. The Americas have been penetrated. Australia is exhausted. Europe has its knickers round its ankles. Recently the invasion of southern Africa began. Hawaii is rapidly becoming unique in offering concrete assurances it is a ‘varroa-free’ locale. We’ll see.

Seemingly limitless in its vision of global conquest, there appears to be little requirement to encourage the worldwide operations of the varroa mite. At the moment, it is simply a case of kicking back and watching its worldwide domination unfold. Soon, experts predict, the entire planet will be contaminated by an epidemic immune to the chemicals concocted to kill it. A virulent new strain may explain why hundreds of millions of honeybees vanished in almost half of America’s states in weeks, threatening £8 billion of crops. Perhaps Colony Collapse Disorder isn’t such a pipe-dream after all…

Wild honeybees, the quintessence of British rurality and heralded by everyone from William Shakespeare to Jill Archer, are on the way out. Those little buggers you see bouncing from flower to flower are invariably imported from Europe or Australia or from colonies reared by man. While you must put up with the fact that, temporarily, sufficient quality crops can still be grown in Britain, both you and the ever-growing British varroa empire can thank the government for opening the door to foreign infestations.

The demise of the honeybee has coincided with a 30 per cent increase in fertilizer use. It is no coincidence. Supermarkets, after all, must somehow compensate for a loss in natural fertility. This can only accelerate the extinction of the honeybee; the wax in beehives doubling as a peculiarly potent sink for airborne toxins. The chemicals, as well as poisoning the bees, also kill off the flowers that provide the honeybees’ food. Beyond the farmers’ fields the meadows are starting to look depressingly sterile. Research confirms that wildflowers like the clover and dandelion are dying in tandem with bees, their mutual dependency dragging one another to the grave. Valentines will be a cheap affair this year.