An Aylesbury man is telling the EU to buzz off over a ruling which threatens to put amateur bee-keepers like him out of business.

Bryan Pilbeam, a fourth generation bee-keeper, earned the unusual tag of Bee Whisperer after revealing his unique ability to mimic the singing of Queen bees with a whistling sound picked up over years of listening to the creatures.

With the help of relaxing music, Mr Pilbeam, 51, uses his skill to calm his 20 colonies, where he breeds Queen bees and produces honey and soap with the help of his young twins, Dan and Sam.

But now he has a bee in his bonnet about a European Court ruling meaning jars of honey must state they contain pollen.

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The ruling says pollen is an additive introduced by keepers, not an integral part of honey, something Mr Pilbeam finds hard to swallow.

You cannot have honey without pollen, he said.

Its crazy. Its like writing contains nuts on a bag of peanuts.

It also requires any produce of honey with more than 0.9 per cent of genetically modified (GM) pollen to be sent for expensive tests.

At £150 to £200 a test, many amateur bee-keepers may struggle to justify continuing in the trade if they cannot cover their costs, with most only charging a couple of pounds per jar of honey.

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I think a lot of part-time bee-keepers will think about whether they want to carry on, said Mr Pilbeam.

Bee-keeping is in my blood, going back many generations, but I may have to consider stopping now.

The rule change came about after a German amateur bee-keeper found traces of GM pollen in his honey and sued the Bavarian government, blaming a company trialling GM products which had set up next to his land.

With bee numbers already in decline, Mr Pilbeam fears even those who become involved for environmental reasons may be deterred from doing so in the future, leading to a further drop-off, as most of the UKs wild bees belong to amateur keepers.

He said: If we dont have bees we will lose a lot of the things we take for granted, not just honey.

Norman Carreck, scientific director of the International Bee Research Association, said: We do understand it could have a massive effect on UK bee-keepers and will be watching the EU outcomes very closely.

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