Can cities save our bees?

Beekeepers have discovered that bees kept in urban areas are healthier and produce better honey. Photograph: Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters

For the past 10 years, colonies of bees have decreased at an alarming rate. A phenomenon called colony collapse disorder has been killing them off en masse, and beekeepers have been quick to alert the public about their high hive mortality. The bees are threatened by new andintensive farming practices (heavy usage of technologies such as pesticides and chemical fertilisers, plant growth regulators, and methods such as mono-cropping and organised irrigation), climate change and the arrival of the Asian hornet. In recent years, the mortality rate of bees has quadrupled. (more)