This week David Amess MP (Southend West) put down no less than eight Parliamentary Questions about bees, beekeeping and the general health and well-being of the nation's bees. No, seriously, he did. I thought at first, Mr Amess was trying to smash all records for asking the most PQs but he has already asked over 4,000 since 1987 and I suspect he already is Parliament's no.1 questioner. One can only assume a worried constituent came recently to his Friday surgery with compelling evidence of impending honey shortages and the associated depletion of the Britain's treasured hives.
The poor Minister replying, Jonathan Shaw, Parly Under Sec at DEFRA, tried to maintain a serious front and poured forth about the Government' s comprehensive Bee Health Strategy and paid fitting tribute to the tireless efforts of the Bee Inspectorate from the National Bee Unit. (This sounds just like the start of a Monty Python sketch, doesn't it? It is not very hard to picture Graham Chapman in the office of the National Bee Unit, wearing a huge bee costume, getting jolly batey about pollen. And still smoking a pipe.)
Mr Shaw referred constantly to the guiding legislation, which we all know is the Bees Act 1980. It turns out the relevant provisions include some pretty protectionist measures taken in the early days of Queen Bee herself, Margaret Thatcher. At the time, there were, presumably, plenty of Conservative backbenchers calling for an altogether more free-market solution to the bee conundrum - 'deregulate the keepers, privatise the hives' the call.
More reassuring for law and order hardliners, the Bees Act does provide (I'm not joking) the police with sweeping powers of entry to any abode or vehicle which may contain even a single outlawed foreign bee. You may ask how the ordinary copper would be able to recognise the alien bee - one assumes every police force in those days had its own Insect Squad.
Mr Shaw referred constantly to the guiding legislation, which we all know is the Bees Act 1980. It turns out the relevant provisions include some pretty protectionist measures taken in the early days of Queen Bee herself, Margaret Thatcher. At the time, there were, presumably, plenty of Conservative backbenchers calling for an altogether more free-market solution to the bee conundrum - 'deregulate the keepers, privatise the hives' the call.
More reassuring for law and order hardliners, the Bees Act does provide (I'm not joking) the police with sweeping powers of entry to any abode or vehicle which may contain even a single outlawed foreign bee. You may ask how the ordinary copper would be able to recognise the alien bee - one assumes every police force in those days had its own Insect Squad.
It is somewhat worrying, the Bees Act itself was passed almost immediately after the release of several killer bee films most notably 'The Swarm'. Michael Caine as the rogue-doesn't-play-by-the-rules entomologist perfectly captured the tension between man and bee when he said, "We've been fighting a losing battle against the insects for fifteen years, but I never thought I'd see the final face-off in my lifetime. And I never dreamed that it would turn out to be the bees - they've always been our friends!"
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