'Adopt a hive' campaign to save Britain's honeybees

The British Beekeepers' Association's (BBKA) campaign sees the honeybee joining the likes of tigers and orang-utans as animals which can be "adopted" to help reverse declining numbers.

The organisation's first public fundraising campaign in its 136-year history aims to raise money for research into the health of the bees and support training for beekeepers.

The scheme, which allows "armchair beekeepers" to follow the fortunes of a network of beekeepers' hives around the UK online, is being backed by celebrity chef Raymond Blanc.

People who sign up to the 29.50 adoption scheme will receive gifts including a jar of British honey or honey mustard, a wooden honey dipper and a newsletter.

They can also follow progress of the hives in South Yorkshire as well as London, Newcastle, Fife, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Kent, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Ipswich, Ayre, Dorset and a mountain site near Caerphilly, Wales.

Raymond Blanc said: "I like to cook with the finest fresh, locally sourced fruit and vegetables and I know just how important honey bees are in pollinating them.

"We cannot take it for granted that the bees will always be buzzing around, we have to keep them healthy.

"If they disappear it will be a recipe for disaster."

Bees play an important role in agriculture, with the value of commercial crops that benefit from bee pollination estimated at 100m to 200m a year.

Honey is worth some 10m to 30m.

But bee populations face a growing number of threats including pests and diseases such as the varroa mite and a lack of habitat providing food sources such as wild flowers.

Numbers of honeybee colonies have fallen by between 6.7 per cent and almost 12 per cent a year over the past three years, according to the Government.

Funding from the scheme will go towards research to help tackle the varroa mite, as well as studying viruses and infections, genetics, husbandry and the impacts of pesticides and loss of habitat.