Beehives ‘do more harm than good’

KEEPING honeybees fuels the decline of wild bees because they compete for the same food, research shows.

The fashion for having a hive in the garden or on rooftops has done ‘more harm than good’ because honeybees are less efficient plant pollinators than wild rivals.

Dr Olivia Norfolk, a conservation ecology expert at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, said: ‘Managing hives does nothing to protect our wild pollinators. It’s the equivalent of farming chickens to save wild birds.’

Beekeeper numbers have almost trebled in a decade.