Colony numbers upheld against tide of losses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jon
In the past 3 years uk colony numbers in the uk have increased from 40,000 to over 120,000 according to the bbka.
That is how badly our uk bees are doing. Numbers have tripled.
Who knows where they came from. Outer space maybe.
You can make a strong colony into 4 good nucs in August and have 4 full colonies by the following May.
What you are demonstrating here is that even major colony losses to systemic pesticides can be compensated by production of nucs at apiaries that are not affected by the pesticides yet and with the help of imports from abroad (... rather than outer space).
Luckily this seems to be the case, but this situation is far from being normal and sustainable.
In the past, beekeepers would make 2 to 3 nucs if they had 10 colonies, to cover against winter losses and lost queens. Now it seems to be necessary to take the same amount of nucs into the winter as the number of colonies, as lots of nucs and colonies just dwindle away.
And just to repeat what was said many times before:
neonics predispose colonies for secondary infections and parasites, and affected colonies cannot defend themselves against varroa anymore due to their compromised defense systems.
BBKA calls colony losses 'unacceptably high'
Repetition seems necessary when minds are shut.
I obviously need to repeat what the BBKA said about the 2010/11 winter losses of 13.6%:
Quote:
This is the fourth consecutive year when BBKA members have reported unacceptably high colony losses...
I assume the BBKA have good reasons to call these losses 'unacceptably high'.
This winter's losses were higher still!