Bee stats - are honeybees in decline?

[gavin]

On another thread we've been discussing the 'bees are declining' line that is prevalent in the media, the public and in some beekeeping circles. It is of huge importance, so let's kick off a thread just on this.

In Jan 2012, a Press Release from the University of Reading said this. Fact or fiction?

The UK bee population is declining at more than twice the rate of that in Europe, according to a new University of Reading study.

The research, published online last week by Dr Simon Potts and colleagues, has shown that there has been a 54% decline in England in managed honey bee populations over the last 20 years, compared to an average of 20% across Europe.

That 54% number has been used by those who would like to think it is representative. It looks like the '54% in 20 years' claim (late 80s to late 00s) may have been accurate according to the figures available at the time. Here is the key figure:

http://www.sbai.org.uk/images/potts2010.jpg
Commentators have said that the spike on the left was due to WWII. Perhaps it was partly the self-sufficiency encouraged by war. It has also been said that the England figure would be influenced by the easing of wartime sugar rationing for beekeepers. Whatever, if you ignore the spike then the decline in numbers up to 1992 when the Potts graph goes sparse was relatively slight. Mid 60s to mid 90s maybe a 20% decline?

What of the pattern since the 1990s? Here is an exchange I had with Murray, Chair of the Bee Farmers Association, in November 2012 on the Beekeeping Forum (it is in a forum area that only established users of the forum get to see).

Murray:

Had Giles Budge as one of the feature speakers at our spring meeting, and the consensus is, though no-one knows anywhere near exactly, is that in the last 20 years the number of colonies in the UK has risen, by about 20,000 to 50,000 units.

The very high figures of >50 years ago coincided almost exactly with sugar rationing and the fact you could get an allowance if you had bees. Thereafter the figure dropped to not too far from todays level.

Yes we get health crises from time to time, but the long term picture is not as grim as it is portrayed.

Me:

What is the national stock, or what percentage is 20-50k? Same question of course!

G.

Murray:

They were not sure, and still are not sure, but if I recall correctly their estimate was that there WERE between 175000 and 225000, probably at the higher end of that, and that today there are 250000 to 275000, again a very crude estimate, including an allowance for the beekeepers not members of anything and not registered anywhere.

The allowance was not plucked out of the air, it was an estimate based on how many extras they found in some unit area surveys they did, and an assumption made and stated, that the same percentage of unknown colonies existed elsewhere.

So, my take on this is that this 'decline in the honeybee' is simply wrong. You could take the NBU estimate, properly take into account the temporary effect of WWII, and shout from the rooftops: 'Apart from the blip of the Second World War, honeybee numbers remain remarkably stable for decades!!' As far as bee farming goes, yes, there may be further opportunities out there to expand particularly in some areas where numbers are sparse. Yes, it may be an ageing profession that could do with an intake of younger start-ups. But there isn't a need to save the honeybee.

Is there a pollination deficit in the UK? Maybe we should tackle that one another day. The Breeze paper. And what about the business of the bumble bee being in decline - do people here believe that? We seem to have some species increasing their range in Scotland, and we now also have the continental colonist the tree bumble bee (Bombus hypnorum) in Scotland too. Is there really a problem with them, other than the northwards shift that seems to be taking place in the insect world?

[busybeephilip]

I think there are several strings to this affecting the whole bee shortage picture, a decline due to farming practice (insecticides), lack of places to keep bees, shortage of free time (work pressures), or the now elevated cost of equipment and cost of bees in recent years. Here in N.Ireland there seems to be no shortage of potential new beekeepers taking up the craft as indicated by interest in beginners classes. Not all of the new beginners end up keeping bees due to them being unaware of the setting up costs and of course the shortage of nuc colonies. The shortage of bees is often the result of clubs being unable to supply demand or persons in the club not willing to spend time setting up nucs while having to look after their own bees. Also, beekeepers with lots of bees may not want to give away or sell bees until after the honey flow. This all leads to a perceived shortage of bees available to beginners.

Rearing queens is easy to achieve, setting up nucs is also easy and the beekeeper will often get more bucks for setting up a nuc than from the honey a hive will produce so wins out in the end.

Equipment costs can be reduced by buying sale items, even making home made kit. I have seen home made fully built and preserved hives for sale in a club here that were as good as if not better made than Thor*es. Also, if the market for nucs became flooded then the costs would fall.

Perhaps we should be saying that there is a shortage of experienced beekeepers willing to provide queens and nucs

[Jon]

Beekeeping practices rather than a general malaise seem to be a big factor in colony density.


Countries such as Germany and Hungary share a similar continental climate, and yet beehive densities in Hungary are more than five times higher than in Germany (Fig. 2). In contrast, the number of beekeepers is five times higher in Germany than in Hungary (Appendix I in supplementary material), and in consequence Hungarian beekeepers handle on average 57 more hives than do German beekeepers. Beekeepers of both countries keep almost exclusively Carniolan bees, and therefore differences in beekeeping practices more likely explain the abundance of managed hives.

Biodiversity, conservation and current threats to European honeybees
Pilar De laua, Rodolfo Jaffé, Raffaele Dall’Olio3, Irene Muñoz1, José Serrano

[Jon]

Beekeeping practices can also have a profound influence over wild and feral honeybee populations (De la Rúa et al. 2009). Coexistence with managed bees ex- poses feral and wild populations to bee pathogens and to introgressive hybridization. Apiculture typically involves the concentration of colonies in apiaries, which facili- tates the horizontal transfer of pathogens and parasites from colony to colony (Fries & Camazine 2001). This can have catastrophic consequences, as demonstrated by the drastic decline of feral U.S. bee populations after the introduction of parasitic Varroa mites in the 1980s (Kraus & Page 1995; Needham et al. 1988). Indeed, honeybee colonies in northern latitudes do not usually survive infestation by Varroa mites without treatment (Fries et al. 2006). Given the extent of the beekeeping industry in Europe, human-mediated disease dissemination is expected to cause important declines in European honeybee pop- ulations (De la Rúa et al. 2009). p591

Estimating the Density of Honeybee Colonies across Their Natural Range to Fill the Gap in Pollinator Decline Censuses
RODOLFO JAFF´ E,∗‡‡‡ VINCENT DIETEMANN,∗†‡ MIKE H. ALLSOPP,§CECILIA COSTA,∗∗ ROBIN M. CREWE,‡ RAFFAELE DALL’OLIO,∗∗ PILAR DE LA R´UA,†† MOGBEL A. A. EL-NIWEIRI,∗ INGEMAR FRIES,‡‡ NIKOLA KEZIC,§§MICHAEL S. MEUSEL,∗∗∗ ROBERT J. PAXTON,††† TAHER SHAIBI,∗ ECKART STOLLE,∗ AND ROBIN F.A. MORITZ∗

[Jon]

Given the comments below about biofuels it will be interesting to see if the EU restriction on some neonicotinoids which are used on biofuel crops will reduce the acerage planted and consequently lead to a reduction in the number of managed colonies


Total Stocks, Area and Demand Total honeybee stocks across the 41 countries rose by 7% between 2005 and 2010 from 22.5 M colonies to 24.1 M colonies, with stronger increases in southern European countries where beekeeping is more common (Figure 1a). Although national stocks more than doubled in Georgia, Denmark and Malta, 15 countries experienced declines of between 4% (Slovenia) and 47% (Switzerland). In both years ,45% of European honeybee stocks were located across Turkey, Ukraine and Spain. Overall area of crops pollinated by honeybees increased by 17% from 23.1 M ha to 27.1 M ha; 2.2 times the rate of honeybee stock increases in the same period. Pollinated crop area increased in most (32) countries (Figure 1b) but was particularly high in northern European countries such as Finland (91%) and Lithuania (70%). Some, mostly southern European countries saw significant area contrac- tions, notably Georgia (262%) and Cyprus (239%). Much of the observed increase in pollinated crop area was driven by growth in insect pollinated biofuel feed crops (oilseed rape, sunflower and soybean), planted area of which collectively rose by 4.2 M (32%) ha across 38 of the countries studied.

Agricultural Policies Exacerbate Honeybee Pollination Service Supply-Demand Mismatches Across Europe
Tom D. Breeze1*, Bernard E. Vaissie `re2, Riccardo Bommarco3, Theodora Petanidou4, Nicos Seraphides5, Lajos Koza ´k6, Jeroen Scheper7, Jacobus C. Biesmeijer8, David Kleijn7,9, Steen Gyldenkærne10, Marco Moretti11, Andrea Holzschuh12, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter12, Jane C. Stout13, Meelis Pa ¨rtel14, Martin Zobel14, Simon G. Potts1

edit. greengumbo has provided a link to this paper below

[greengumbo]

Should the question actually be "are honeybees in decline relative to how much we require their services ?". There are many threads bound together in "honeybee decline". I think going by absolute numbers is a bit of a red herring personally. Here is a new paper that talks about some of this in better details than I can !

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0082996

Either way, even if the honeybees are in decline drum is a naive one to bang - I would rather the public cared about bees, pollinators and biodiversity in general and got behind that rather than some other nonsense campaigns out there.

[drumgerry]

There are a few things which occur to me in relation to this question - opinion rather than fact however I should make it clear! For one thing I would suggest that there has been a decline in the numbers of beekeepers. Despite all of the current interest in beekeeping I think we're a long way from the days when everyone had a colony at the end of their garden - some of which you canstill see empty and rotting away. And I don't think this is a uniform situation. Perhaps (I don't know) the beekeeping boom is more of an urban or urban hinterland phenomenon? Certainly in rural Moray and Speyside there are fewer beekeepers now than there were. Lots of old timers packed up when varroa hit. And as we all know the days of let alone beekeeping are long gone.

When it comes to Strathspey (a huge area of ground) the colony numbers are optimistically probably fewer than 200 unless you count the seasonal move of Murray's hives to the upper Strath in late summer. There's no reason a large number of permanent colonies couldn't be supported but there aren't the number of beekeepers.

I also think there needs to be a shift in focus away from "the bees are in decline" to "help the beekeepers keep going". Our associations do a sterling job of course but long term support from government is needed (there's me back on my favourite hobby horse again!).

[Little_John]

Are honeybee numbers in decline ?

Well, with regard to the UK - how can anybody say for certain ? What form does this data take ? When researchers talk about 'estimates' - how exactly do they 'estimate', when in this country beekeepers are not obliged to register with any body (official or otherwise) with the capability of collating data - therefore the number of colonies being kept within the UK can only ever be a guess. Can such a guess ever be a good guess ? Well - who can say ? (After you with the Ouija board ...)

According to some sources, a lot of beekeepers have now left the BBKA, apparently as a result of their 'Bayer finance scandal' - which would suggest that even colony data from the BBKA membership cannot now be reliably used. (could it ever ?)

I personally believe that the number of colonies have significantly decreased over the years, but I accept that there's no way of conclusively proving this. Although it must be considered anecdotal - when speaking to villagers around these parts (South Lincs), the story is always the same: that almost every village used to have someone who kept bees, but not any longer ...
Which is hardly surprising, as my immediate area would be a complete 'nectar desert' if it were not for OSR (which is very much a mixed blessing).

Add to this, I have heard of several commerical beekeepers who have eventually given up, due largely to European imports of queens and far-Eastern imports of cheap honey. Very hard to make a living against such advantaged markets.

LJ

[Jon]

According to some sources, a lot of beekeepers have now left the BBKA, apparently as a result of their 'Bayer finance scandal' - which would suggest that even colony data from the BBKA membership cannot now be reliably used. (could it ever ?)

BBKA membership is at record levels and growing. 24,000+

http://www.bbka.org.uk/about/

Bee base is voluntary so not all beekeepers are listed but they have a system for calculating increase/decrease in colony numbers according to the number of unregistred apiaries they encounter while out and about. I dare say there are inaccuracies but it is a better way to estimate uk colony numbers than just imagining they must be less than they used to be.

[busybeephilip]

Just want to say my bee allergic Epipen daughter spent a few weeks in Romania doing charity work, she reported to me that keeping bees in Romania is as common as keeping a dog in the UK - so no shortage of bees there, but then they are seen as an essential part of the household income unlike the UK where beekeeping is a hobby.

[Jon]

Beekeeping is popular in some low income countries as you can generate a sideline income from bees without necessarily having to own land.

We now have 23 people taking the current introduction to beekeeping course in Belfast BKA so still seems to be plenty of interest at a hobby level.

[Little_John]

BBKA membership is at record levels and growing. 24,000+

http://www.bbka.org.uk/about/

Bee base is voluntary so not all beekeepers are listed but they have a system for calculating increase/decrease in colony numbers according to the number of unregistred apiaries they encounter while out and about. I dare say there are inaccuracies but it is a better way to estimate uk colony numbers than just imagining they must be less than they used to be.

Eh ? I didn't make any comment about the BBKA's current membership figures/ success etc. What I said was, it is being claimed that many beekeepers have left the BBKA. Those that have left will therefore not be represented in any BBKA's stats.

You consider that chance encounters of unregistered apiaries is a sound basis for estimating UK colony numbers ? 'cause I don't.

Further - there is a growing number of 'natural' beekeepers who hold very negative views of conventional beekeeping and of the BBKA, and an even more negative view of BeeBase. Whether they are justified in holding such opinions or not isn't the issue - what matters is that such people will most probably be keeping colonies in clandestine ways, in order to avoid detection and (what they see as) the unwarranted intrusion of inspections. Such apiaries, I would suggest, would be almost impossible to identify. And - this is a growing style of beekeeping.

Just because BeeBase is an official body doesn't mean that it's methodology is efficient.

LJ

[mbc]

Excellent points being made here, but perhaps the most obvious omission is the wild/feral population.
I would say the most telling factors in honey bee population swings and roundabouts would be :
-First World War, lots of beekeepers blown to bits in foreign fields, enormous numbers of suitable wild nest sites gone when the trees were harvested for timber.
-Isle of Wight disease.
-Introduction of tractors and the demise of the working horse and the massive amount of bee friendly pastures needed to feed them.
-Second World War, more trees harvested, dig for Britain impacting forage vs. rationing as a compelling incentive to keep bees.
-Varroa, (and as Gerry says) the end of let alone beekeepers, also the end of any significant number of wild/feral colonies.

All of this with a background of increasing population - a certain percentage of odd-bods will always want to keep bees, but increasing urbanisation and development, increasing field sizes and fewer hedges and less diverse crops all mean less forage.
I think also the average beekeeper has radically changed, we used to take it for granted that the reason to keep bees was for our benefit, so that we could harvest honey and wax and have our gardens pollinated, nowadays there is more of an attitude that we are doing nature a favour by keeping bees (maybe we are, but the attitude makes me despair) and the number of beekeepers who dont wish to harvest any honey is mind boggling, get a life!
The answers have already been highlighted by Greengumbo,
"Either way, even if the honeybees are in decline drum is a naive one to bang - I would rather the public cared about bees, pollinators and biodiversity in general and got behind that rather than some other nonsense campaigns out there."
and drumgerry,
"I also think there needs to be a shift in focus away from "the bees are in decline" to "help the beekeepers keep going"."

[Jon]

Further - there is a growing number of 'natural' beekeepers who hold very negative views of conventional beekeeping and of the BBKA, and an even more negative view of BeeBase. Whether they are justified in holding such opinions or not isn't the issue - what matters is that such people will most probably be keeping colonies in clandestine ways, in order to avoid detection and (what they see as) the unwarranted intrusion of inspections. Such apiaries, I would suggest, would be almost impossible to identify. And - this is a growing style of beekeeping.

If that is really the case colony numbers are likely far higher than the official estimate.

[drumgerry]

"Growing number of natural beekeepers"? Not seeing much evidence of them lasting more than a season or two. And when they do pack up they'll probably attribute their failure to pesticides or the like rather than their own failings. And so the demise of the bees myth is perpetuated.

[Adam]

I think the number of kept colonies is largely dependent on how fashionable it is. The number of members of beekeeping association has increased for that reason alone with a consequential rise in the number of colonies kept. The 'old fashioned' beekeepers who just left their hives to it have largely gone due to varroa. Unfortunately so have the feral colonies for the same reason. I suspect there's a lag between actual bee colonies on the ground and the reports of decline/increase. And it suits the reporters to state that bee numbers have dropped, for headline and also political reasons, conveniently forgetting the recent uptake of the craft.

We had a yo-yo craze at school for a while. Then balsa models. Then a putting-blakeys-on-your-shoes craze as well. The kids are getting the sides of their heads shaved thinking it's new. No, it looks like George Fornby but they would hate to know that! Fashion comes and it goes.

I wonder if in a couple of years time, there'll be reports that 'honeybee numbers have risen' even after the number of beekeepers and colonies has started to reduce as new 'keepers fail and drop out. The reporters will probably say the rise is all due to the ban on neonics and that CCD isn't happening in the UK any more - when it never did!


BTW I am now a blakey free zone. :)

[Rosie]

I think that although productivity per colony has probably declined due to agricultural changes, the number of colonies depends solely on the number of beekeepers we have. The tabloid stuff about bees dying is a myth brought about by some stupid BBKA stunts of around 6 or 7 years ago. It was then that they tried to get public pressure to force the government to reverse their policy of reducing expenditure on bee research. To do this they pushed the notion that bees were declining at such a rate that they would be all dead within 10 years.

I predicted that the only thing that would decline would be the BBKA's credibility. I was half right because bees didn't decline but for some reason the BBKA is still consulted by officialdom and the media. I think they all have short memories.

Now that popular opinion is that bees are in dire straits they need to find a scapegoat. Enter Bayer - a convenient big business that the public are happy to knock despite scant evidence of their guilt. Another consequence is the large number of well-meaning citizens who think they have a duty to get into beekeeping to help save the bees. They exacerbate the forage shortage, import incompatible stocks which are destined to fail (weakening the existing stock at the same time) and overcrowd the colony densities to encourage disease transfer. All this can be traced back to the BBKA who thought they were being clever by exaggerating the bee's problems and motivating the public with a falsehood.

[Adam]

Rosie,
May you not suffer from colon collapse disorder!

[Rosie]

That sounds awful Adam. I appreciate your concern!

[wee willy]

:D
WW


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[Black Comb]

This recently published document may be pertinent to this thread.

https://consult.defra.gov.uk/plant-and-bee-health-policy/a-consultation-on-the-national-pollinator-strategy/supporting_documents/140305%20STATUS%20AND%20VALUE%20OF%20POLLINATORS%2 0AND%20POLLINATION%20SERVICES_FINAL.pdf

[madasafish]

My experience of other natural beekeepers I have met or talked to is that most last for one season and the first winter kills off their colonies as they are not competent to manage them...

There are some Warre beekeepers who really object to inspections and the idea of any Bee Inspector "tearing their colonies apart " when looking for foul brood in an infected area. (they can be found occasionally on the warrebeekeeping site on Yahoo Groups.).

I would not wish to be associated in any way with such people.. they would no doubt object to human vaccination against polio as "not natural".

I suspect natural beekeepers have a natural lifespan of 2-3 years - ...

[Little_John]

There's a rather interesting talk by Marla Spivak on YouTube - runs for some 16 mins - which addresses the decline in bee numbers, which may be of interest and of some relevance to this thread. www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5WzzSfJAhQ
BTW - YouTube videos can be saved with http://en.savefrom.net/1-how-to-download-youtube-video/ for viewing later.

[gavin]

..... for viewing later.

Or padding out your bee talks ;-)

Not with this one though.

RealPlayer also lets you do this.

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[Little_John]

There are some some University of Reading stats in this report which may be of interest to the non-believers ...
http://www.foe.co.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/beesreport.pdf

LJ

[Jon]

Report commissioned by Friends of the Earth.
It is mostly about bumble bees and solitary bees as opposed to honeybees.

This stat is quoted but is hopelessly out of date as honeybee colony numbers have quadrupled since 2010 according to bbka calculations.
Maybe there were other more recent ones I missed but given the age of those figures it looks like selective use of statistics as there is much more recent data available.


In particular, the number of managed
honeybee colonies in the UK fell by 53% between
1985 and 2005 (Potts et al, 2010a)