It was national poetry day on Thursday. After reading something today I thought of this poem which was in an anthology I had long ago:
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
I was reminded of this poem while reading about the latest research showing that honey bees are being poisoned by neonicotinoids that they collect from wildflowers sown around the margins of arable crops. The neonics are sprayed on the crops, but being systemic they are taken up by all the plants in the area, crop and wild alike. They find their way to the flower, the pollen and nectar, and are collected by the bees.
In a very curious coincidence the research found that 97% of the neonics collected by the honey bees, were taken from wildflowers. Exactly the same statistic as the proportion of wildflower meadows lost from England and Wales since 1940.
Farmers are encouraged to plant wildflowers around their crops to help save pollinating insects, under a project called Operation Pollinator, amongst others. Operation Pollinator proudly publicised a success story recently, when a bee that had not been seen in Lincolnshire for over 100 years turned up at a farm (Beeswax Farm would you believe?) on which they were working – a farm owned by James Dyson the inventor.
Operation Pollinator is funded by Syngenta, producers of neonicotinoid pesticides.