Canterbury beekeeper says higher East Kent bee numbers are 'reassuring'

KentOnline / KMTV

David Wood has kept bees for 40 years and is glad to hear that more than 46,000 bumblebees have been spotted in East Kent in the last 15 years.  Kristin Hawthorne reports.

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00:00When was the last time you seen a bumblebee? Well if you've recently been to East Kent

00:04your chances are higher than anyone else in the UK. That's because between 2008 and 2024

00:11more than 46,000 of them were spotted by trained volunteers on fixed routes

00:16as part of the bee walk scheme. I went to East Kent to meet with a beekeeper who has more than

00:2040 years of experience to see what he thinks of the figures. East Kent has the highest number

00:26of bumblebee sightings. What is your reaction to that? Reassured. Obviously we're aware of the

00:33impact of the climate. The further south you go the cooler it tends to be. Despite this advantage

00:40these figures come at a time of growing concern nationwide as numbers continue to plummet. It

00:45was actually found that bumblebee numbers dropped by 22.5% across the UK in just one year. I mean they

00:53are like all insects suffering from various stressors and they are finding it very difficult

01:01to cope with the increasing temperature because they've got fur coats of course. East Kent is

01:06supposed to be the garden of England so we should have a wide variety of forage. But it's not just

01:13East Kent doing the heavy lifting as West Kent also made the top 10 making Kent the only county in the UK

01:20with two regions ranked for sightings. But experts say numbers alone won't save the bumblebee and

01:26protecting habitats is key. Although David says that you can't look after bumblebees in the conventional

01:31way like you can with honeybees he says that you can look after them by planting things like lavender

01:35and thyme in your garden. He does however luckily enough have two bumblebee nests in his garden this is

01:41just one of them. We've been here for about 10 minutes there's one about to go in now and he says that if

01:47you see one of these in your garden to be vigilant and you know if you're cutting the grass or doing

01:52your garden to just look after it and not touch it. I think the message is gradually getting through

01:58people are more aware certainly of the stressors that insects are subject to certainly the yellow

02:08tailed yellow-legged hornet has had an impact. We've lost or I think probably 90% of our wildflower

02:19meadows over the last hundred years subject to building so that takes out a lot of forage for

02:29the bees. I worry about the future full stop and not only of bumblebees but of all life on this planet.

02:36So while the buzz for bees in Kent is real, the work is far from over. Kristin Hawthorne, KMTV in Canterbury.

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