Embercombe's activist bees....

I wanted to share this. Phill Chandler of Friends of the Bees  has sent the following announcement out... and its an excellently researched, clear and actually quite horrifying read...


OPEN LETTER TO THE BRITISH BEE KEEPERS ASSOCIATION

Since 2001, the British Bee Keepers Association has been receiving in the region of £17,500 per annum from pesticide manufacturers Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and Belchim in return for the BBKA's endorsement of several insecticides as 'bee-friendly'.

The BBKA policy of accepting money from such corporations, taken without consulting the membership, has been condemned by many of its members, other European bee keeping associations and some NGOs as unethical.

While the Executive seem now to have changed their mind again and have dropped the direct endorsement of pesticides, there are still some very important questions that need to be answered.

And - importantly - they have not ruled out accepting money from the pesticide manufacturers under other pretexts.

We call on the BBKA to sever all financial ties to manufacturers, sellers and promoters of any substance known to be or likely to be toxic to bees or other insects.

READ THE FULL TEXT HERE -  http://www.britishbeekeeping.com


IF YOU ARE A BBKA MEMBER - ask your delegate to support the Twickenham motion at the ADM on January 15th. See http://www.britishbeekeeping.com/docs/TwickenhamCanning.pdf for details.

And look out for the story in The Independent!

Please distribute this message to all beekeeping friends.

Phil Chandler
www.naturalbeekeeping.org