06/02/2017 Inside Out South

Hello.

Is is time to think out of the box when it comes to honey?

With bee numbers falling, something needs to be done.

Modern beekeeping is definitely adding to the trouble.

It's developed in such a way that the most profit can

be made from the bees.

If people suggest that we should stop collecting honey,

they don't actually understand the principle the bees work on.

And a Hampshire family opens up about their battle with mental

health and the struggle to get help.

He'd be taking knives, like this, out of my kitchen drawer.

He said he wanted people to feel his pain that he was suffering.

I feel that it's unfair on my family that they've had to put

up with all of this.

But they love you.

Yeah, I know they do, but...

Every year, thousands of people with mental health problems

end up in police cells, in court or in prison.

With one in four of us expected to struggle with our mental health

at some point in our lives, there simply aren't the support

services to go round to everybody who needs them.

David Fenton's been finding out what happens when those asking

for help are turned away.

As you can see, both of my windows have gone.

This was just all smashed and jagged.

For Anna Holder, living with her son can be difficult.

This is when Taran's been really frustrated and unable to cope

with how he's feeling, he's come and actually punched

through the cupboards, he's had knives and been

stabbing at the cupboards.

I'm having to try and calm him down while he's got a knife in his hand

and punching things.

For Anna, everything changed when Taran was 11.

He fell off a swing and cracked his head.

Taran's always been a joker.

A happy child.

Until he had his head injury.

He became a different person, very angry and aggressive.

My thought process goes a bit nuts sometimes.

I don't feel in control all the time, so my mind comes up

with all sorts of ideas which are going to happen so I m

starting to get ready for things like fight or flight.

Taran has paranoia and multiple personality disorders.

For him, the world outside his house is a scary place.

I'd end up end up breaking and smashing things in a rage,

breaking down crying.

I felt like one day was years.

I felt like a lot of time I was going through...

In 2015, his paranoia got worse.

He began carrying weapons whenever he went outside.

He'd be taking knives like this out of my kitchen drawer.

He said he wanted people to feel his pain that he was suffering.

There was times when people were walking up to me and I've

put my hand there and I'm ready to take it out.

So yeah, I guess I was dangerous.

I could hear people talking outside, so when I walked past them

that day I knew something was going to happen to me and that

they're going to get me.

So I thought, "Right, I m not going to say nothing."

I started looking out the window a lot as well and then see vans

waiting outside.

They could be there for two minutes

and I'd already come up with something in my head that

something's going on.

I thought that someone was definitely out to get me

and that the people in the area were waiting.

It's not just been people,

I've had conspiracy things with the police as well.

You must have known that was illegal to be carrying

knives out in the street?

Yeah, of course I knew it was illegal, but I also

had my life right at the time.

I felt my life was at risk, so that's why I carried them.

What would have been the trigger?

If I was threatened in any way, then I would have used it.

I wouldn't have liked to.

And did you use them?

Only on myself, in the end.

Taran wanted to be in hospital.

His family wanted him sectioned for his own good.

But the professionals said no.

I was begging them to come and see him,

begging the psychiatrists to see him to review the meds,

begging for him to go into hospital.

And basically the only way I can describe it is

they left him like an animal.

A year on, Taran was still not well.

I had a phone call from his girlfriend and she was screaming

and crying and saying Taran had been shouting saying, "I've had

enough, I want to be dead" and he was actually throwing himself

in front of cars.

It ended in a stand off with police.

Now, he's on his way to court with mum and partner Andrea.

We are going to court and they will decide whether Taran

needs to be punished for his mental health or not.

How are you feeling about that?

I feel really angry and really upset because we have been asking for help

since August for psychologist or medication review or anything

and we didn't get it and the question today should be

whether Taran get a psychologist and proper help or not.

And it's still not nothing about helping us.

He's been charged with damaging cars and spitting at two officers.

Taran could be going to jail today.

He is nervous.

He's been drinking a little bit for a couple of days.

He doesn t like to make out that he's nervous but he is, definitely.

You can tell.

Yeah.

BLEEP.

Court is there.

That's where I go magistrates, I'm not in crown court.

That's where we go.

In the taxi, the nerves begin to show.

It's not BLEEP good, is it?

Depending on what happens, if they say it was down to my mental

health or not or if I say I plead guilty, I don t know what's

going to be the outcome, so I just expect the worst and then

whatever happens happens.

I feel it's unfair on my family that I m here and they have to put

up with all of this.

But they love you.

Yeah, I know they do, but...

It's hard sometimes to explain why.

I should feel better if they didn't have to put up

with all the problems in my life.

What if he goes to prison?

Well, we wait until he comes home and start again

the game, asking for help.

Taran has pleaded guilty.

He's about to hear his sentence.

He wouldn't cope in prison.

No way.

I think he'd kill himself, that d be it.

It's quite positive, he's not going to prison.

It's the result they were hoping for.

And he will get, hopefully, the proper help.

He's on a community order,I think that s what they call it.

The court has ordered Taran to see a psychologist.

It's exactly what he d been asking for.

You'll be all right.

Yeah, it's all sorted now.

They obviously see I wasn't well at the time

and took into consideration the things that were going on.

So I'm lucky this time.

Yeah, so I'll speak to you when I get home

anyway, but it's all gone well.

It's good, isn't it?

Bye-bye. Bye.

Outside the court, I notice there's something different about Andrea.

That's the engagement ring, is it?

It was a surprise for me, I didn't really expect it.

He was on his knees.

So, yeah, bit of crying.

Quite romantic and really surprising, actually.

You were very pleased.

Yeah, I was, yeah, really pleased.

I'm wearing my ring quite proudly, yeah.

If you are going to miss an appointment for whatever reason,

make sure you phone.

Taran says goodbye to the mental health team who helped in court.

He'll get the treatment he wants.

Not everyone is so lucky.

Taran may struggle with his mental health, but whatever the future

holds, at least he's not facing it alone.

David Fenton reporting there.

If you've been affected by any of the issues

raised in David's film, grab a pen because details

of where to get some help and advice are coming up at

the end of the show.

Still to come: Joe Crowley asks if Government cuts

are putting our farmers and our food at risk.

Just time for a quick reminder about Twitter.

You can find out more about what we're up to at...

Next, is our sweet tooth putting the long-term future

of the honey bee in jeopardy?

Every year, we get through a staggering half

a billion jars of honey.

Are we simply asking too much of the little honey bee?

Bees ? nature's wonder.

Man's sweetest friend.

For thousands of years, we've benefited from these

incredible insects.

Here in the UK we consume more than 25,000 tonnes

of honey every year.

Bees are very calm, very content and you'll notice we've not used any

smoke on them at all yet.

Ian Homer from Dorset has been mastering his skills as a beekeeper

for the last 36 years.

Total relaxation.

I've never come across anything that gives me quite as much variation

of interest as beekeeping does.

It also gives you honey.

There's probably just a little over ?3 of honey there.

Ian collects around 300 jars of honey every year,

from his 12 hives near Bridport.

I enjoy so many different aspects of beekeeping.

It teaches you so much about geology, about flora,

about the social structure within the colony.

Although Ian's hives appear to be healthy,

the UK population of bees

has fallen by a third over the last century.

Some experts blame the use of pesticides and the destruction

of natural flower rich habitats.

Others say that intensive farming of bees leaves them more

vulnerable to attack from the Varroa destructor -

a parasitic mite that can wipe out a colony.

In an attempt to halt the bees' decline, in this Sussex garden,

Heidi Hermann has adopted a controversial

approach to beekeeping.

Modern beekeeping is definitely adding to the trouble.

Over the last 100 years, it's developed into what I could only say

is a kind of control freak, taking control of every process

of the hive in such a way that the most profit can be made

from the bees for their product.

Heidi is one of a growing number of natural beekeepers

who are suggesting that our sweet tooth might be contributing

to dwindling bee numbers.

How many different colours there are, some more black than others.

She doesn't use any chemicals and builds hives out

of natural materials.

So is it all about trying to keep bees happy with

the minimal amount of stress?

Happy is, sort of, a human term, but the main aim

is to keep the bees healthy.

Yes, and to keep colonies, long lived colonies, that

are in tune with their environment and are able to perform

their pollination task in an effcient way as possible.

This is a hive made of straw, ideally organically grown straw

because this is the home where all the babies

in the future will be raised.

And as they expand, bees expand downwards not upwards,

and I gave them more room by putting those boxes underneath.

The Natural Beekeeping Trust believes taking honey

from the bees weakens the colony.

Heidi only harvests a very small amount for use as a medicine.

And you'd never take honey from this?

You would never gather honey?

No, I would not take honey from this because it would mean

disrupting that hive.

There are hives I have that make it possible to take honey.

But, I have to say, it's neither for myself nor for any of my fellow

trustees in the Natural Beekeeping Trust.

The honey is definitely not a priority.

I think if people suggest that we should stop collecting

honey, they don't actually understand the principle

that bees work on.

Bees will go out to gather enough honey for themselves

and they will keep gathering honey until the nectar flow stops

or the colony dies out.

If we stopped gathering honey, eventually we'd get to a stage

where a lot of colonies would cease to function because they wouldn't

have anywhere to keep all of the honey.

Traditional beekeepers, like Ian, also worry that Heidi's chemical

free approach to disease control could increase

the spread of Varroa mites.

They have to remember that the bees that they keep are part

of a national stock of bees.

Those bees fly freely and interact with other people's bees.

And if they're not inspecting for disease, which few

of the natural beekeepers are able to do because of the way

in which the bees are kept, then that could spread

disease into my hives.

You can't be on the treatment treadmill forever.

If a colony is stressed, it has no possibility

of defending itself, of actually developing its own innate

defences against Varroa.

My bees have never been treated against Varroa

and they do absolutely fine, they have better longevity

than most beekeepers' bees.

One thing both Ian and Heidi do agree on is that bees need our help.

In Andover, carpenter Matt Sommerville has taken a natural

approach to lending a hand.

Matt, this is everything a traditional hive isn't.

It's not square.

No.

It's just a beautiful thing.

What's the idea behind it?

It's not that complicated.

All I've really done is look at bees in the wild and try to replicate

a nice habitat for them off the ground, away

from people and predators, where bees can evolve to be healthy.

And we're finding that set up in trees, bees just thrive

without human intervention.

Bees have been round for millions and millions of years,

long before we came on the planet, and they've always been looking

for places like caves or trees, that was their place to go,

and nowadays a lot of trees are being cut down and there isn't

a habitat for the bees.

So by making these, we can allow bees to find them by themselves

and we're getting strong bees from them.

This one was my first.

I had no idea whether bees would find it.

We just found a suitable looking tree and whacked it up there.

Within two weeks - bingo, bees found it.

So the theory is you just let the bees do their thing?

Yeah.

If there aren't bees in the area, then you don't get any bees.

Just like a bird box.

I quite often come back just to watch them, their progress.

If the queen's healthy and laying, then they bring back lots of pollen.

Seeing bees bring back sacks full of pollen is a good sign that

everything's strong in the hive.

If they're surviving, then they're genetically strong bees.

However they're doing it, they're strong.

We need them so much for pollination, not just

for ourselves, for all our fruits and vegetables that we eat,

but for nature, generally, all the flowers in our landscape.

That's the primary importance of bees.

No dead bees.

It's dry and I can just see one Varroa mite in the middle there.

So it's amazingly healthy, really.

In this natural environment, the bees appear to be thriving.

This small scale, hands off approach is what the Natural Beekeeping Trust

wants to see more of.

Rather than a few people keeping hundreds or thousands of hives,

we need thousands of people keeping two or three hives,

taking honey in small quantities, at the same time using honey only

for medicinal purposes rather than food.

Do you get people go, "Aw, it's all well and good,

but it'll never work in practise?"

It's almost an idealistic approach.

It's certainly an idealistic approach, but without idealism

there will be no future.

If we carry on in the rapacious way that we are using

in relation to all of nature, there will be no future.

What do bees mean to you?

What fascination do they hold?

You feel that they know you and they are very

aware of your intention.

Yes, I do keep bees for the pleasure of their company.

They are very pure.

We need to strive to be the same.

Now, don't forget, if you want to get in touch with the show why

don't you drop me an e-mail?

Finally, these days we expect what we eat to be safe.

But with Government cuts hitting the labs which help

keep our farms disease-fre, Joe Crowley has been hearing

from those who fear our farming industry and, more importantly,

our health is at risk.

There's money in meat.

We spend ?18.7 billion on it every year, so it's no surprise that

monitoring and stopping the spread of diseases like foot-and-mouth

is a top priority.

The fight to eradicate foot-and-mouth has

been going on for over

90 years and this place, The Pirbright Institute,

is right on the front line.

It's a world-class research facility responsible for developing vaccines

and trying to control some pretty nasty diseases.

There are countries that are endemic to foot-and-mouth disease along

the border of Europe, but what we are starting to see

is we see certain strains popping up in places that we don't

usually see them.

At the moment, we're actually developing something that will look

like a pregnancy test, where you get a simple

line across the little cassette to tell you whether or not

a sample is positive or negative

and, of course, the quicker that you can identify an outbreak,

the quicker you can put in certain bio-safety regulations and prevent

the outbreak from spreading.

Pirbright may be at the cutting edge, but it has the odd blemish

on its safety record.

Pirbright may be at the cutting edge, but it has the odd blemish

on its safety record.

The 2007 foot-and-mouth outbreak, which cost farming ?100 million,

started when the virus escaped from Pirbright.

In the last decade, there have been 15 safety breaches here,

including a ?70,000 fine in 2014 for failings

over foot-and-mouth.

Why is the record here so poor?

There is always a risk with running facilities like this,

but by the infrastructure we have here now and the improved procedures

and protocols we have in place, I think we've contained that risk

to the smallest possible.

You handle live viruses here, with that there's always

going to be a risk.

Is it worth it?

It certainly is, with all the diseases that are approaching

the borders of Europe.

We are seeing viruses move like we hadn't

seen them move before.

And so there's a real threat of a number of these viruses coming

into Europe and coming into the UK.

I would say we're between outbreaks, they're not going away.

Recent diseases to reach us in Britain include Bluetongue,

avian flu and then there's the ongoing Bovine TB epidemic.

Keith Cutler is a vet based in Salisbury.

His practice is the only one left in this part of Wiltshire,

covering more than 2,000 square miles, half of it

in TB infected areas.

In my experience, it's worse than it's ever been.

TB is increasing in prevalence and now we have a significant proportion

of the country endemically infected.

Wiltshire is now in what's called the high risk area and Hampshire

is in the edge area where new cases are cropping up fairly frequently.

Today, Keith is TB testing and checking for pregnancies.

This dairy farm is constantly producing milk and new calves,

but recent inconclusive TB results mean they're on lockdown -

losing money every single day for farmer Phil Shearing.

I can't sell any calves at the moment, so I've got to either

keep them or humanely get them killed.

There's a lot more disease we're finding we've got to do a lot more

vaccinations and DEFRA being cut is going to affect us big time.

We're sort of being left out on our own and we are dealing

with the consequences.

With the ?220 million animal health budget set to be cut

by a third within the next three years, seven regional labs that used

to diagnose and identify new diseases have already shut down.

Winchester's gone, so Keith's nearest Government lab is now over

100 miles away.

Diseases tend not to be investigated to the extent

that they were when Winchester was open, and it means we don't

have the surveillance network for the new and emerging diseases.

Concerns are that our surveillance system will fail.

A new or exotic disease will already be established in this country

before we find out it's here and it will be difficult then

to bring it under control.

Now, when you see good money being bid for fine beasts like this,

you might think everything's rosy, but actually farmers are struggling.

Profits for the industry overall fell by ?1.5 billion last year,

mainly due to falling food prices, and that means that farmers

are vulnerable to any outbreak in disease,

indeed it's thought many wouldn't be able to survive it.

We could have a lot more help, there could be a lot

more Government support.

There aren't enough politicians that farm.

If they farmed, they wouldn't cut.

It's farmers that are suffering from not having these

centres because obviously if they have an animal die

on the farm they want to know why it died because they want to know

if there's anything wrong with it and should they,

what action should they take.

And so it's getting harder and harder to get

a postmortem done.

And it's worrying for the vets, they're all trying to do their very

best to help everybody, but there s not enough of them.

And that's the knock-on effect of Winchester closing,

that you don't have this information at your fingertips you don't

have a local centre you could have gone to.

Exactly, we would go, in fact ours would be

Bury St Edmunds from here, believe it or not.

We've had two well publicised diseases come into the UK recently,

bluetongue 2006, Schmallenberg two or three years ago, thank

goodness those don t cause problems to humans.

Another very well-known example is something like Zika virus

which is catastrophic to humans.

And that's why it's so important that we pick up

on these diseases early.

The classic example of that, I suppose,

is mad cow disease or BSE.

So, back in 1986, vets started noticing and, farmers of course,

started noticing some strange behaviour in some of their animals

and they were able to get a really professional diagnosis from those

animals by submitting them to their local surveillance centre.

From that, a whole new disease was discovered which no-one had

really recognised before.

We never know what's around the corner.

So we have to have the facilities in place and we need

to have the experts in place to deal with that when required.

There are more than 800 diseases that can pass

from animals to humans.

You're in a deep sleep, aren't you?

Hmm?

Did you hear that?

Christine Lord lost her son Andrew 10 years ago to CJD ?

the human form of BSE.

To hold your once fit, strong 24-year-old son

in your arms and watch him die, it's indescribable and the pain that

I feel today, time doesn t heal.

Food should be safe, it shouldn't kill.

I lost my son because of an animal disease.

I'm just appalled that no lessons have been learnt,

but I'm not surprised.

We asked the Government why it's cutting animal health budgets

and surveillance centres.

A spokesperson told us

the remaining labs are in areas with the main

populations of farmed animals, and that world-class expertise

at the central lab means it's well placed to detect

new and emerging diseases effectively.

But with around 23,000 farms in the south-east, vet Keith Cutler

is worried we are vulnerable to new disease outbreaks.

All the time there are cuts coming to the surveillance budget

and from Government, perhaps, the wrong message is being sent,

perhaps the message is that it's not important and I think

it's vitally important.

There's a reduction in surveillance.

Is it the start of the end?

I don't know where it's going, but we're

probably not as on the ball as we used to be.

Joe Crowley reporting there. That's just about it for now.

Plenty more stories from the south to come next week.

Till then, bye-bye.

Details of organisations offering help with mental health are

available at bbc.co.uk?actionline.

Or you can call for free at any time to hear recorded

information on 08000 564 756.

Hello, I'm Riz Lateef with your 90-second update.

Overcrowded - the number of patients on wards in England have been

at unsafe levels in nine out of ten hospitals this winter.

That's according to BBC analysis.

NHS bosses said there were problems discharging frail patients.