THE SECRET LIVES OF HONEYBEES

This summer, BBC Radio 2 is encouraging everyone to help the bees with its Big Bee Challenge. bit.ly/big-bee-challenge

Since the Middle Ages, humans have had a close relationship with honeybees as we’ve captured and reared them for their valuable and delicious honey. Over time, however, captive honeybees started to outcompete wild honeybees, which were also losing habitat as their native forests were cut down. Then in the late 1940s, beekeepers in Africa started to see outbreaks of a virulent parasite – the Varroa mite – which quickly spread to hives in Europe and the Americas.

Now virtually every commercial colony in the world is infected with the mite, requiring treatment to prevent complete colony collapse. Because of the widespread distribution of the mite, people assumed that wild honeybee colonies must have also come under attack and been wiped out from their forest habitat in