SIR – For decades, beekeepers have been removing virtually all stored honey from hives and replacing it with a sterile solution of refined sugar and factory-produced “bee food”.
Could it be that we are taking, for our own benefit, the very substance that enabled the bees to resist infection and the assaults of mites?
SIR – Richard Gray’s report on the importance of ivy for bees (April 26) brought to mind Gerard Manley Hopkins’s sonnet from 1885, Patience, hard thing.
The sonnet, with its image of the worker bee dropping honey into the honeycomb after a day spent in the warmth of the shining ivy, is given scientific authority by Professor Francis Ratnieks’s findings.
Colwyn Bay, Conwy