Scottish Honeybee Restocking Programme 2013-2014
On BBC2 at 9pm tonight What's Killing Our Bees? A Horizon Special.
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This series of posts started under the 'Neonics are killing our bees' thread but as the discussion has since focussed on the SG-subsidised 'restocking' issue - and due to the importance of this issue - I've moved it to a new thread here. This area, 'Scaling up and marketing' was originally intended for commercial beekeeping issues. On you go ...
Gavin
PS I should add that Lindsay wasn't the one taking the discussion to the current import issue - he just pointed us to the BBC Horizon programme as something of interest regarding bee 'die-offs' and I've given this thread its current title in its new home.
Scottish Honeybee Restocking Programme 2013-2014
The commercial bees arrived this weekend on the heather - about 1/2 mile from us in a bee line. I checked my three hives this week for varroa and all were clear. We'll see how long that lasts. Luckily queen in apidea was mated before they arrived.
Scottish Honeybee Restocking Programme 2013-2014
On the BKF Murray related NBU comments from a BFA meeting (too many acronyms!) that since 2005 (I think) there has been a 20pc increase.
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Scottish Honeybee Restocking Programme 2013-2014
Quote:
Originally Posted by
greengumbo
I watched this last night on aye player. Pleasantly surprised at the balance shown. I would love for someone to give an accurate account of colony numbers and losses over the past say 20 years. Bill had a figure from 2002 - 2005. I mean that's 8 years ago now ! I still struggle to find accurate numbers for this and the NBU are hard to pin down as well. Those transponders on the bees were brilliant.
BBKA have 12/13 figures for England ... an average of 33.8% (see http://www.bbka.org.uk/files/pressre...1371062171.pdf). This also has figures for all winters from 07/08. Why didn't they include Scotland? Northern England were higher, mid forties. Remember that this was a straightforward poll of members so - a bit like Amazon reviews - might reflect an average of responses from "Doris Disaster" who lost all her colonies and "Stevie Smug-Git" who lost none and wants the world to know what a good beekeeper he is.
With apologies to Doris and Steven. You know who you are. No offence intended ;-)
I too thought the programme was reasonably well balanced but was disappointed that it dwelt overly on the fancy machines - harmonic radar and electron microscopes - rather than significance of the results obtained from using them. I would have liked more detail on the stuff from Simon Potts, including practicalities and the impact on farming methods.
However, it's clear from the opening of the programme that the evidence supporting the statement that bees are in decline is so well accepted by everyone - beekeepers, scientists and the public - that it no longer needs to be presented. At all.