Today, Wednesday 20th May marks World Bee Day, Falmouth based Memorial Beehives tells Nub News why bees are so important and the need to look after them.

Memorial Beehives provides a memorial for loved ones, like when people sponsor a park bench.

People can visit the hives but they have to be properly protected in beekeeper's suits.

Owner Colin Packham produces honey from the hives, each season a person who sponsors a hive gets three personalised jars.

Colin handles bees on a daily basis so knows what wonderful insects they are and what they do for our ecosystem, he told Nub News

"Today is World Bee Day 2020. Celebrated in remembrance of Anton Janša, born in Slovenia 20 May 1734, Anton was one of the founders of modern beekeeping.

"Sadly this anniversary is overshadowed by the recent pandemic, which brings to the forefront how important and fragile our world is becoming.

"If it wasn't for the vital work of the pollinators and insect life which

contribute to the ecosystem where would we be? As over one-third of the food we eat depends on bee pollination.

"Focusing my passion on honey bees, did you know that it takes 12 worker bees their entire lifetime to produce one teaspoonful of honey?"

Colin also provided Nub News with some "quirky facts" about bees:

- Honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to

sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals and water.

- A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles - the equivalent of three orbits

around the Earth - to produce 1kg of honey.

- A colony comprises between 20,000 to 60,000 honey bees and one queen.

- Bees are the only insects that produce food eaten by man.

- Worker honey bees are female, live for about six to eight weeks and do all of the work.

Colin tells Nub News about how World Bee Day can bring attention to the decline of bees, he added:

"If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live, Albert Einstein was reputedly to have quoted.

"The poor old honey bee and other pollinators have had a rough time of it and are constantly under threat.

"There are many factors to their decline, such as the excessive use of pesticides, monocropping and agricultural practices, invasive insects and parasites, such as the Asian hornet, (not to be mistaken for the European hornet) and Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that attacks and feeds on the honey bees.

"Our role as beekeepers is to monitor and maintain the health of the colony and to intervene where necessary. With awareness for World Bee Day hopefully, the plight of our honey bees can be kept in check."

Click here to see more from Memorial Beehives.