BRITAIN’S only professor of apiculture (the study of beekeeping) is to begin some groundbreaking research which may tell us how to make the UK more bee friendly.

There has been a catastrophic decline in the number of honeybees in Britain and across the world and Professor Francis Ratnieks hopes his four-year project will help provide the landscapes bees need, to gather their food.

To do this he will use observation hives and video and well as investigating the effects of changes in land use.

Professor Ratnieks will also be studying the bees’ “waggle dance” a sophisticated communication system in which a bee returning to a hive, will communicate where its source of nectar is to be found.

He also hopes to involve the public in helping to decode the waggle dance online at a later stage in the project.

Professor Ratnieks will be monitoring two groups of four hives on the South Downs in Sussex to try and determine which habitat the bees prefer, distances travelled, weather and seasons and how these relates to the amount of honey produced.

Bees pollinate nearly £200m worth of crops in the UK every year.