SUSSEX PLAN FOR HONEY BEE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

That this House welcomes the extra £10 million investment from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the Scottish Government for research and investigation into the decline in British honey bee and other insect pollinator numbers; believes that the severity of the immediate health problems facing honey bees demands that a significant proportion of this funding is allocated straight away to tackle honey bee population decline; gives its full backing to the Sussex Plan for Honey Bee Health and Well-being, which aims to breed disease-resistant hygienic honey bees, decode dances to determine where worker honey bees are foraging, test and develop European and North American Varroa control methods under British conditions, and monitor hives for pathogens and other causes of mortality; and calls on the Government to give a proportion of this additional funding to research into honey bee health, such as the Sussex Plan to help determine what is harming honey bees and how best to maintain the health and well being of the UK's most important pollinating animal.