ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners have scattered hundreds of thousands of seeds to give the county’s bee population a polination boost.

Members of Oxford Friends of the Earth are warning that the city must do its bit to prevent a decline in the UK’s bee population.

The group of up to 30 campaigners scattered a mix of British wildflower seeds across 100sqm of The Kidneys Nature Reserve off Iffley Road.

Campaign leader Fiona Tavner, from Marston, said: “We want bees to be able to keep carrying out the amazing work they do as pollinators.”

She explained: “Bees are essentially doing us a free favour.

“The hope is that when the wildflowers grow they will spread across the Kidneys.

“Bees are incredibly important to our environment and economy – without them pollinating crops and plants we will have to hand-pollinate and that will cost the UK economy £18bn a year.”

Oxford Friends of the Earth spent several weeks turf stripping and rotavating the land so the seeds will successfully germinate.

The Bee Cause campaigners were supported by MP for Oxford East Andrew Smith who lent a helping hand to scatter the seeds.

He said: “It’s really important that we make more spaces available like this in our communities for bees and other pollinators to feed and flourish.

“Local action is vital, but to save our bees we now need a National Bee Action Plan.”

The Oxford effort is one of 60 UK areas being seeded to mark 60 years since the Queen’s coronation.

Friends of the Earth say in the years since Queen Elizabeth came to the throne 97 per cent of Britain’s natural grasslands have been lost.

Bees have been a hot topic for environmentalists after a United Nation’s 2011 report stated there had been a decline in the planet’s bee population.

Campaigners scored a victory last week, after the European Union voted for a ban on the nerve-agent pesticides blamed for the decline.

But Oxfordshire’s recorder for wild bees, Ivan Wright, said the picture is not as bleak in Oxfordshire as elsewhere in the country.

He said: “Generally, Oxfordshire is a great county for wild bees.

Mr Wright records the types of wild bees found across Oxfordshire for the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre in Eynsham, but said estimating the number of bees in Oxfordshire was “an impossible task”.

County bees

Oxfordshire has around 100 bee species, compared with 250 across Britain - though the country has lost 20 species since 1900.

A new report released this week revealed Oxfordshire is one of the few places left that you can now see the Scabious Bee – the UK’s largest mining bee.

The University of Reading report analysed bee species across the UK and found the Scabious Bee could only be found in small pockets in the south-east, including Oxfordshire.