Small Hive Beetle in mainland Europe

[gavin]

Hand out public money to beekeepers losing colonies and many of them will just go and order more from far-flung places. That has to be a bad thing especially when, these days, you might get a document printed on nice paper but you often don't really know how reliable was the inspection it confirms, and whether any inspection would detect a few SHB in a large bulk or some new virus to interact with the Nosema ceranae we already have. But when the Authorities are trying to stamp out a new pathogen then they will be brutal and need as few beekeepers as possible to be hiding, so I can see the point in compensating for SHB destruction.

This is the point when I have to say that the main hobby beekeeping organisations early in their existence made sure that they put in place compensation schemes funded by the members. This was explicitly to encourage the community spirit required for beekeepers to put their hand up when they had something that might badly affect their neighbours. It costs a small fraction of a legal Varroa treatment per hive to do this. Why do the bee farmers not run their own compensation scheme?

Across the EU beekeepers get hand-outs from the EU Apiculture Programme for 'restocking'. Just restocking in the normal course of events, from PPB or whatever other cause, not severe weather payments. Surely this just encourages a lack of sustainability in beekeeping. Something for the UK PM to point at when looking for savings to avoid some of that huge bill he has in front of him? It would hurt some of the bee exporters, but would be one small step towards making beekeeping more self-sufficient.

[gavin]

So it seems, but I'm not sure that we know that no-one volunteered information. We should also bear in mind that there could be many more cases where the beekeepers themselves are destroying affected colonies. That happened in 2009 when there was the discovery of a huge EFB problem locally. I know that many were not being deliberately hidden from the authorities then (though some were for a while, a few were suspicious of authority), it was just that beekeepers wanted to get on with the job and eliminate infection. Even when the authorities were told of these cases they hadn't confirmed each case themselves so they weren't recorded. Could easily have been more than double the number of official cases then.

The worry is this might be going on ahead of SHB inspections in other regions of Italy so that the remaining SHBs will not be detected for a while longer, if they are there.

As for the BBKA, I despair. It seems to be an organisation that just can't get things right. The one discussion I had with a senior BBKA person was going nowhere. I'm so glad that I'm not a member.

[fatshark]

On a slightly different tack why are the BBKA members tolerant of the idiotic BBKA stance?

I suspect there's a significant number of BBKA members who import queens and possibly even packages. Their stance on imports has always seemed a bit woolly to me e.g. the rather lukewarm encouragement to use local/native bees in the classified column. The annual influx of new beekeepers every spring needs nucs-a-plenty … many of these beginners join the BBKA via the association they trained with. It might be bad for business to reduce the supply of bees for newcomers. I'm raising the SHB issue via my association and will shortly talk with a Trustee about it.

[gavin]

There should, of course, at the top of any organisation with influence, be 1) a degree of knowledge of a topic so that the right responses can be made when needed, and 2) a constant desire to do the right thing.

One new snippet. At the Annual Conference in Piedmont, there was an interesting discussion on SHB involving leading figures in Italian beekeeping and key regulators such as Franco Mutinelli, head of the Italian National Reference Lab for Beekeeping and Maroni Ponti from the Ministry of Health Directorate for Animal Health and Vererinary Medicine. This from Giovanni Guido (of the beekeeping organisation CRT Unaapi PA):

10,000 queens went from there (he may be talking about 'the south' rather than the affected region?) to all Italian regions and central France, and swarms (presumably packages?) too.

That's a lot of queens. Assuming this is true central France (and anywhere these queens went if quickly sold on) must be an enormous risk. The guy from Piedmont was also saying there were links to beekeepers there from Calabria. Also Dr Ponti seemed to be talking of migratory beekeepers taking their bees home when the outbreak surfaced.

Run this through Google Translate (or read it yourself in Italian):

http://www.mieliditalia.it/index.php...10-25-08-04-22

[chris]

France? Who cares about France?

Our regional association's attitude is that if it arrives it will never be kicked out. Everyone is being urged to insist on a written guaranty from the seller that the packages and queens don't originate from a colony imported from Italy since 2014. But Italy is our biggest supplier....
And what's a written guaranty worth when your hive gets infested.

[Rosie]

I'm raising the SHB issue via my association and will shortly talk with a Trustee about it.

Good luck with that. I know of someone else who tried to talk sense into them but got nowhere at all. They seem to be so entrenched that I suspect the only thing that would influence them would be a complete haemorrhage of members joining alternative associations.

I can't recommend joining the WBKA yet as they have not, as far as I know, made any sort of announcement of their policy but knowing the people involved it will not be as half baked as the BBKA one. If you join my local association (South Clwyd BKA) membership costs £15 a year.

[gavin]

France? Who cares about France?

Moi! Peut-être un peu ....

They are probably right about eradication, unless you tackle the first apiary it gets to. Maybe, just maybe, we can get some of the illegality out of beekeeping. Those who import illegally, produce false or meaningless certificates, that kind of thing. One advantage of a campaign as you describe is that raises awareness of the problem, and puts pressure on traders to comply with recommendations and regulations. Perhaps it will also give people evidence to take some dodgy characters to the courts.

I would like to see someone (beekeeping organisations perhaps, BBKA probably excluded given their record) put up rewards for anyone supplying evidence that leads to a conviction for evading bee trade requirements. Yeah, OK .....



.... but maybe.

They seem to be so entrenched that I suspect the only thing that would influence them would be a complete haemorrhage of members joining alternative associations.

The SBA hasn't come out with one yet but it will discuss this on 15th November at its Executive meeting, with the members at the Council meeting and at a local association secretaries meeting on the same day.

There is also an article by the bee health guy in the next magazine, but if you've been paying attention here it may carry nothing much new .

[prakel]

Moi! Peut-être un peu ....

They are probably right about eradication, unless you tackle the first apiary it gets to. Maybe, just maybe, we can get some of the illegality out of beekeeping. Those who import illegally, produce false or meaningless certificates, that kind of thing. One advantage of a campaign as you describe is that raises awareness of the problem, and puts pressure on traders to comply with recommendations and regulations. Perhaps it will also give people evidence to take some dodgy characters to the courts.

Before doing so, or at least simultaneously, they should be taking the incompetent UK officials to court (as well as relieving them of their jobs and any related pensions). You know the ones, those that allowed a load of legal packages to come into this country (penguins on a plane programe) on the back of a pickup complete with hitch-hikers 'all the way from Italy' hanging on the outside of the cages. What good is any health check IF strays are allowed to come along too?

[gavin]

That seems a bit harsh. I wouldn't like to be relieved of my job or pension over something that isn't my responsibility. As I understand it, within the EU the exporting country certifies and we are supposed to accept the standards of the exporting country. The random checks made on arrival are only a sample. Imports from Third Countries are different and all of these come through Border Inspection Ports.

http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/publi...portReport.cfm

I'd rather target the shysters who bring in numbers of imports under the radar with no inspection at all. For example, there was one guy on BKF recently boasting that he personally knew that the official record was less than half the real number. I'm not saying that the official imports are safe, just that the illegal ones likely to be the ones that come from even worse places, perhaps smuggled over some far away border into the EU by someone of very limited scruples.

[prakel]

I think that the official standards need to be of a much higher quality to begin with. The example I mentioned above shows that there's still plenty of room for improvement.

As for the BKF guy, I didn't see that so don't know who it was or what position they're in to make such a statement. There's a lot of nonsense spouted on the forums such as a recent thread on BKF claiming that Batsis are using Galtee breeding stock for the amm which they import to the UK -18 months after I posted on there with contrary details which had themselves come to me direct from Batsis. Some people are very quick to look like authorities by repeating whispers but hate to do little ground work themselves.