EFSA report on risks of spread of small hive beetle

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi C4u
I'm conscious of the fact that you are the only importer of bees from Italy who is prepared to defend that position in the forums
Am I right in saying that you import the majority of colonies brought in from Italy ?

I don't much care for spin so I try and avoid it

I wouldn't buy bees from someone who had a policy of returning empty Nucs or other equipment after the bees were decanted
That's a bio security issue
(They don't know where those nucs were sitting before the bees were moved into a hive and the box returned)

I stand by what I said before, that if I bought a nuc (and I don't need or want to) then I would rather pay £150 or even the £180 delivered including 4 or 5 frames of bees +stores all on drawn frames with their own overwintered queen rather than 1.5Kg of bees imported from Italy in a transport box
(Cue Gavin "I can do that")

You point out that some crooks are just re-homing your package bees and selling them on as UK bees
Of course that can only go on if the packages come in to UK in the first place

You have mentioned Afb and Efb a few times, and again that can affect anyone who is unlucky, but the risk is greatly increased with migratory beekeeping for obvious reasons.

Small hive beetle is another matter since it is known to be in Italy already ,and although you have said you are not worried by SHB, if gets here, I think you should be

As a large bee keeping operation you can choose to be a force for good, or not, that's your choice

If you can't get a good honey price and it's not due to poor marketing then I sympathise
http://www.colonsay.org.uk/LocalProd...ters-and-Honey

Sometimes a step back and a new direction might provide solutions, rather than sticking with the old plan and relying on cost cutting to stay afloat.

Some of the bee management techniques you have recommended such as getting bees drawing wax at the end of Sept or even October and bulk feeding invert syrup in November, or taking the lids off all the hives at once, and trickle treating them with oxalic acid in 2.5 mins /per hive might be a reason why you have to keep replacing lost colonies
Can't say for sure but I wouldn't do those things without a degree of anxiety

Anyway it's not for me to give you advice on how to run your business I can only say how it looks from the outside

[prakel]

If you can't get a good honey price and it's not due to poor marketing then I sympathise
http://www.colonsay.org.uk/LocalProd...ters-and-Honey

Sometimes a step back and a new direction might provide solutions, rather than sticking with the old plan and relying on cost cutting to stay afloat.

But how much of those prices is made up by postage and packing? Also there's an issue of quantity isn't there. IF I remember correctly, the Colonsay site used to mention that their average production was slightly less than 30lb per colony (based on +/- 60 colonies) although I admit that I may be wrong on that as I can no longer see any mention of averages.

edit:

Colonsay and Oronsay sustain around 50 colonies of bees. Yields vary with summers but are below the U.K. average of 30lb per colony. There are few beekeepers on the West coast of Scotland, the climate being too wet for commercial beekeeping. Colonsay lies to the west of the rain shadow and it's high sunshine hours make beekeeping viable, if marginal.

[mbc]

...........will be in the vicinity of 25000 ....

So, official figures suggest there are about 275000 colonies in the uk and there will be nearly 10% of this in demand just for packages, let alone queens and nucs from abroad, just in one year, staggering if true.
I think this is where people find it hard to agree with, where do all these bees go? Obviously, individually they perish, but on the colony level?!! It just smacks of exploitation and using bees as a fungible commodity. Most of us as beekeepers like to think we get to know our colonies and that we care for them and nurture them over a period of years, this barely seems possible if the boxes are full of creatures we have little connection to other than payment, delivery, installation, harvest and replace.
Of the hundreds of bka's in the uk, most will presumably raise nucs to supply beginners, I'd have thought that a good proportion of the 45000 individual beekeepers will easily make increase or hold steady over a number of years, and there are many enthusiastic beekeepers producing many thousands of home reared queens and nucs for sale, the classic progression for beginning beekeepers is to spend spend spend on more equipment for the first few seasons as they get to grips with swarm control and they desperately need extra bee housing, so I follow the Drone Ranger's consternation that the numbers don't seem to add up.

[gavin]

On the topic of numbers not adding up ...

That you [Drone Ranger] have very few losses ever does not actually reflect on the true picture of beekeeping across the country. In one recent winter the overall loss rate was close on 60%. That you had 10% is both laudable and probably fortunate. I saw very good beekeepers almost wiped out. Angus was a badly hit county, and the highest I know of, outwith the very small amateurs where some had no bees left at all, was 98% losses in one outfit. That same winter we only lost 15% in our poly operation but variable between 40 and 60% in the wooden hives. They were well fed, looked OK in autumn, but collapsed in the late winter. The worrying thing was, like in 2015, all had seemed ok, they were well fed and dry and in proven winter locations, but they had had to work in September to get a harvest and they were worn out.

I seriously question your claim of an overall 60% loss rate and also wonder whether the beekeepers which were nearly wiped out were really the 'very good beekeepers' you think. Contrast the 60% with 20% of full hives lost in the survey of the members of our local association, not all of whom are excellent and experienced beekeepers. We separated out losses of nuclei which were at 50% but the full colonies did not fare too badly. This also applied to our members in the east of our area, exactly the same territory where the 98% loss you mention occurred. Yes, the numbers in the survey were not high, but came from as many of our members as we could persuade to fill in the survey. There was no incentive to over or under report losses. These people have the full range of level of experience and competence including at the poor to middling end. As one of the people helping raise standards in our association I'd like to acknowledge the help you have given me over the years and feel that some of the success of our members comes from that. You will also see in the report that some members said that they united some colonies to get them through the winter, so the number of colonies in the spring will have been lower than otherwise to an extent.

So your 60% doesn't make sense to me. Nor does it make sense to encourage more imports by people who lose all but 2% of their stock. There have to be reasons for that loss being so high, almost certainly beekeeping reasons. There was one bee farmer who lost 80% of his stock in 2009-10 - again, prompting successful calls for funding to save businesses, but ask folk closely and they'll tell you exactly why this outfit had such high losses. Again beekeeping reasons. The solution is not to import and continue as before, the answer is to improve the beekeeping.

There is no doubt that there have been times when winter losses were high and businesses were in trouble, but building in resilience is a much better way forward than buying in more stock to do it all again. This also applies to amateurs. Such a lot of the huge flow of imports you describe goes to rank amateurs getting into a hobby to 'save the bees' but who in fact often lose their stock and contribute to increasing the risks of new pathogens and poorly adapted bee stock arriving in the UK. The fact that many are unaware of the recently imported status of the stocks they purchased is a serious indictment of the way the trade operates.

[gavin]

The divergent agendas of the anti import side of things raises its head at this point between those that would have the UK go back to and Amm reserve... and those who just want the border closed .... come to a head a bit at this point. There is no way I want to live and work (indeed could not) in what would effectively be a bee museum.

[Taking his cue from some discussion on here some time ago about a commercial beekeeper charging for the adoption of bees and visits ...... ]

... and charge the people, a dollar and a half just to see them!

A bit of hyperbole there - see comments above about businesses in Ireland that work on improving the bee they already have rather than bringing in allsorts.

Divergent agendas because there are many reasons why wholesale importation is bad for beekeeping and the disapproval of it as a routine practice is widespread. Agendas though? Do those with different opinions from you have agendas and you just have views? Personally, I think that you are exaggerating for effect. I've yet to meet anyone who realistically wants the UK to go back to an Amm reserve - I think fatshark was throwing in the quote from the BKF because it contrasts greatly with your view of the beekeeping world.

[Calluna4u]

Hi C4u
I'm conscious of the fact that you are the only importer of bees from Italy who is prepared to defend that position in the forums
Am I right in saying that you import the majority of colonies brought in from Italy ?

I think about 60% of the OFFICIALLY RECORDED ones. Photos exist on the net of consignments of packages and nucs on combs bound for the UK, on trucks with UK registrations, that were never recorded. Not aware of recent pics, but within the last 10 years.

I don't much care for spin so I try and avoid it

I wouldn't buy bees from someone who had a policy of returning empty Nucs or other equipment after the bees were decanted
That's a bio security issue

Why? do you think we are stupid about sterilising gear?

(They don't know where those nucs were sitting before the bees were moved into a hive and the box returned)

With no combs in them its not relevant, as they get sterilised before reuse anyway. The majority are transferred by the clients in our place before being taken away that night. We do not deliver nucs unless by special arrangement.

I stand by what I said before, that if I bought a nuc (and I don't need or want to) then I would rather pay £150 or even the £180 delivered including 4 or 5 frames of bees +stores all on drawn frames with their own overwintered queen rather than 1.5Kg of bees imported from Italy in a transport box
(Cue Gavin "I can do that")

That is entirely your choice. I did not really have you marked down as a potential customer anyway.

You point out that some crooks are just re-homing your package bees and selling them on as UK bees

Why crooks? they are not doing anything illegal insofar as the bare bones of that act are concerned. Trades descriptions might be another thing if they are being mis sold.

Of course that can only go on if the packages come in to UK in the first place

So you would rather the folk around Angus took the ones made from UK bees? Even with no health certificate, double the price, and paralysis virus widespread in the producing area?

You have mentioned Afb and Efb a few times, and again that can affect anyone who is unlucky, but the risk is greatly increased with migratory beekeeping for obvious reasons.

With AFB I would strongly disagree....its a real rarity and has been found for the most part in non migratory amateur units, although it has been an issue with nuc vendors in the south. I would also take issue on the matter of EFB. We migrate a lot but do not see it as being in any way exacerbated by being migratory, and as with AFB being primarily an amateur issue in Tayside, EFB is primarily in the professionals, yet I have never heard of a case where WE have caused it to cross over to the resident amateurs by our activities.

Small hive beetle is another matter since it is known to be in Italy already ,and although you have said you are not worried by SHB, if gets here, I think you should be

Why? I would like someone to explain that to me (without resorting to sub tropical scare story pics). I have had direct contact with a lot of people about SHB....and unless I work in Florida or Georgia or Alabama and to a limited extent neighbouring states, the view is that it is not even a management issue. Just something you MIGHT see from time to time and that our climate will not be conducive to it prospering. The general response is 'so what?' and they don't even treat for it. Kim Flottum, at Weybridge a year or two back described it as a non issue and compared to varroa its nothing.

As a large bee keeping operation you can choose to be a force for good, or not, that's your choice

I guess that depends on your point of view. Beekeeping is a broad church with many diametrically opposed positions. I think the prevailing concensus would be that we are NOT evil incarnate, but equally not afraid to challenge positions and to challenge things that are not accurate. I don't mind being challenged on my positons either. that's healthy.

If you can't get a good honey price and it's not due to poor marketing then I sympathise
http://www.colonsay.org.uk/LocalProd...ters-and-Honey

That's a tiny niche market and would not provide an income for even one man. Try selling 60 or 70 tonnes that way. Impossible. Been down the packing and selling route myself for many years and its no golden solution. The only man who really made serious money at bees is in Yorkshire, and never bottles a jar. All in bulk and full time attention to the bees.

Sometimes a step back and a new direction might provide solutions, rather than sticking with the old plan and relying on cost cutting to stay afloat.

You plainly do not understand how we operate. The bees get everything they need.

Some of the bee management techniques you have recommended such as getting bees drawing wax at the end of Sept or even October and bulk feeding invert syrup in November,

These work beautifully.

or taking the lids off all the hives at once, and trickle treating them with oxalic acid in 2.5 mins /per hive might be a reason why you have to keep replacing lost colonies
Can't say for sure but I wouldn't do those things without a degree of anxiety

??? Where did you get that idea? The lids are NOT off all the hives at once for oxalic treatment....its a two person job and one opens and closes hives and the other just trickles all the time. I actually have a relatively LOW loss rate especially in poly hives, and those are the ones most likely to be both fed and treated vary late. I have already dealt with varying interpretations about what loss statistics mean. I am generally content with ours and bad loss seasons are relatively uncommon.

Anyway it's not for me to give you advice on how to run your business I can only say how it looks from the outside

Well, I have asked you before if you want to come and have a look, to which you did not respond. There are no secrets here so please don't make assumptions about our management processes or standpoint on sustainability 'from the outside'. From some of the things that have been said you might find it interesting and illuminating. Not suggesting it might lead you into making changes but you might see that there are many ways to skin a cat, and as for the invert feeding and new foundation in Sept etc? All I can say is give it a try on ONE hive, then come back and tell me I am talking rubbish. 25000 plus hive seasons says it works without giving any problems.


ps...was out with my son on NYD checking for roofs off etc....visited one large group of hives in poly that were the very last group home and fed, in third week of November. 80% of them have taken all 14Kg of InvertBee, most of the rest had taken at least 70% of it and had bees in the feeders in small numbers taking syrup down. From what we could see they were mostly in the 7 to 9 seams of bees in a Langstroth deep and for now look excellent. The ones with a little bit left will be the fastest off the mark in spring.

....

[prakel]

....new foundation in Sept etc? All I can say is give it a try on ONE hive, then come back and tell me I am talking rubbish. 25000 plus hive seasons says it works without giving any problems.

Very different location of course but we tried it on twenty this year. Very impressed with the ease with which they drew the foundation -we even incorporated a few wired but foundationless frames into the mix and they were filled OK -but slower than the frames with foundation obviously. Ask me again in May, but as things stand I can see this practice becoming central to the way I keep bees.

[Calluna4u]

On the topic of numbers not adding up ...

That's the truth...the numbers in beekeeping make a little sense at times, and the 275K as the number of colonies in the UK is very suspicious. Utterly static for a decade.

I seriously question your claim of an overall 60% loss rate

Not my figures, they were compiled by various people, were regionally very mixed, but it WAS a very serious winter and losses of that level, even if you accept only 40%, are very damaging....but it was ONE winter in the last 5, not happened since.

and also wonder whether the beekeepers which were nearly wiped out were really the 'very good beekeepers' you think.

LOL Gavin...you and I know very well that those two cases were special cases. They had done things that were at best unwise and at worst negligent. Problem affects every sector of farming that gets support. the givers of assistance do not appear to be allowed to use qualitative judgement as to the management capabilities of the potential recipients. I am sure ( and so are you) that a couple of the recipients of the hard weather aid were not being favourably viewed as deserving cases.

Contrast the 60% with 20% of full hives lost in the survey of the members of our local association, not all of whom are excellent and experienced beekeepers.

Amateurs contain some of the very best and worst of beekeepers. I would expect the best of them to do very well loss wise as they have the time to lavish on them and don't need to keep an eye on the balance sheet.

So your 60% doesn't make sense to me.

Not a locally generated figure, but there were some bad situations locally not connected to the two units you correctly single out, but their loss does contribute to the overall figure.

Nor does it make sense to encourage more imports by people who lose all but 2% of their stock.

No-one 'encourages' it, but its legal and safer than UK sourcing (yes...that's an opinion) and I think it important to be a route that is open to those looking to rescue their situation.

There have to be reasons for that loss being so high, almost certainly beekeeping reasons. There was one bee farmer who lost 80% of his stock in 2009-10 - again, prompting successful calls for funding to save businesses, but ask folk closely and they'll tell you exactly why this outfit had such high losses. Again beekeeping reasons. The solution is not to import and continue as before, the answer is to improve the beekeeping.

Where do we disagree on that. I am defending imports but as you well know, and I have said numerous times on here, I favour a twin track approach. that allows for a transition, and while you highlight two entities that have had recurrent problems, another well known outfit have used the help to make a big transformation in their management and have been rightly praised for their progress. They were saved by imports at one point.

There is no doubt that there have been times when winter losses were high and businesses were in trouble, but building in resilience is a much better way forward than buying in more stock to do it all again. This also applies to amateurs.

Again, we are not in fundamental disagreement here. However, seasons of catastrophic loss do happen, albeit generally quite widely spaced out. Total border closure would be a catastrophe, maybe once in a decade or even more rarely.

Such a lot of the huge flow of imports you describe goes to rank amateurs getting into a hobby to 'save the bees' but who in fact often lose their stock and contribute to increasing the risks of new pathogens and poorly adapted bee stock arriving in the UK.

I would dispute the 'poorly adapted' bit. MAY be poorly adapted is more like it but not all the stock is in any way poorly adapted and we are very selective. However a lot of UK stock is poorly adapted too. All depends on your definition of poorly adapted. That's is very much dictated by what you expect of your bees. High crop or modest crop? High vigour or low vigour? Hard as nails survivors or more management needed high yielders? The presence of the Channel does not make all bees on one side of it inferior.

The fact that many are unaware of the recently imported status of the stocks they purchased is a serious indictment of the way the trade operates.

Yes, and underlines a lot of issues. Of course the recent history of the bees should be reliably accounted for. Its basic traceability like any other section of product selling these days, irrespective of whether the recipient wants to know or not (most don't). We remain an under inspected and loosely regulated country bees wise. You of course are aware of the packages dropped off to an English client last spring. I thought they were headed to Gloucestershire and Wiltshire and some out to Pembrokeshire. Turned out the recipient was taking the whole lot to Scotland, where they sold them on to yet another recipient. Another vendor, despite being in possession of the Italian health certificate, sold them on as French, to avoid having to answer the inevitable, and perfectly fair, questions about SHB

....

[fatshark]

This also applies to amateurs. Such a lot of the huge flow of imports you describe goes to rank amateurs getting into a hobby to 'save the bees' but who in fact often lose their stock and contribute to increasing the risks of new pathogens and poorly adapted bee stock arriving in the UK. The fact that many are unaware of the recently imported status of the stocks they purchased is a serious indictment of the way the trade operates.

I think it's also a serious indictment of the way a lot of training and associations work I'm afraid Gavin. These comments do not directly apply to Scotland as I've no real experience (yet) of how associations here train new beekeepers ...

I'd started writing a response to the comment by mbc Of the hundreds of bka's in the uk, most will presumably raise nucs to supply beginners but got overtaken by other events. The short answer to this is "many don't".

Beekeeping is fashionable and many associations train large numbers of new beekeepers each season. I know of at least two large associations (150-250 members) that train ~20% of their total membership each year. Nevertheless, membership numbers increase by at most 2-5% per year. A lot start and then abandon it during or after the first season ... perhaps after the first winter if they've not received sufficient mentoring to prepare their colony (colonies) in late summer. Many, many others start without any training at all. You can't learn this stuff from books.

Clearly not everyone who completes the beginners course decides to start keeping bees, but a significant proportion do. The demand in early season is - as Gavin and calluna4u say - enormous. Do these associations cap the spaces available for training based upon the numbers of nucs that could reasonably be expected to be _locally_ available? Do they use association apiaries primarily for nuc production to meet this demand? Do they guarantee (within reason) a nuc of known provenance to all those who complete their course? Do they guarantee mentoring through the first critical season when more or less everything is new? No they don't. I've long thought this was irresponsible. Beginners courses are used as a revenue-generation stream. 50 new starters at, say, £75-85/head is a nice chunk of cash for 6-8 theory sessions and one or two early season apiary sessions, perhaps with the vague offer of some mentoring going forward together with a place on the 'swarm list'. Not all associations operate like this of course ... but there are loads of new beekeepers, unlucky beekeepers and hapless beekeepers who start or 'do' their beekeeping without help from any association.

The associations often feed the demand without making any organised attempt to meet it. I think that a consequence of this is that the standard of amateur beekeeping is highly variable and that the average is rather low. Clearly we all know friends and colleagues who are excellent but these are often the exception rather than the rule. My involvement in mentoring and queen rearing over the last few years has shown that there's a lot of enthusiasm but very variable competence. In shared apiaries (i.e.all beekeepers 'trained' locally) there were individuals routinely losing swarms, failing to treat for mites, feeding too late etc. When challenged some would respond that they could easily get replacements by buying them in. Presumably those with colonies in their back gardens have the same range of competence. Goodness only knows how people do with no training. All of this generates intolerable demand ...

One way to reduce this demand is to increase the standard of beekeeping. As I said earlier in this thread, I'd prefer we didn't have imports to the UK because

1. every package, queen or nuc that arrives has a payload of viruses that are never tested for. These viruses are highly variable and regularly genetically recombine ... in distantly related human viruses such recombinants have been shown to have novel and highly unpleasant (i.e. fatal) characteristics. Every year beekeepers struggle with DWV. The last couple of years have seen significant problems with the related paralysis viruses (also Iflaviruses). As far as I'm aware none of these viruses are tested for and, often, we wouldn't know what particular combination or cocktail of pathogens were the ones to look out for.
2. cheap imports are a quick fix for poor beekeeping. They're a quick fix for impatient beekeepers. And they're a solution that - at €30-50 or whatever the wholesale cost is (I think it's in an earlier post from c4u) - discourages beekeepers to routinely acquire the skills necessary to prepare and overwinter nucs, or for associations to devote the time and energy to teaching these skills.

Is there a solution? ... possibly, but it's not necessarily easy or quick. Change would be required at national and association level at the very least. National association would need to be honest about "the bees are all dying" ... this sort of misinformation has been a boost to their coffers as well as to the associations.

PS When / where did this paralysis virus (acute, chronic, slow?? ... I think not chronic from the beekeepers I've talked to) come from and who has it largely affected? Is there a correlation between imported stocks and paralysis?

PPS I'd encourage DR to take up the offer from calluna4u ... I value his contribution to these forums and have enjoyed (and been educated by) talking with him

[Calluna4u]

A bit of hyperbole there - see comments above about businesses in Ireland that work on improving the bee they already have rather than bringing in allsorts.

Divergent agendas because there are many reasons why wholesale importation is bad for beekeeping and the disapproval of it as a routine practice is widespread. Agendas though? Do those with different opinions from you have agendas and you just have views? Personally, I think that you are exaggerating for effect. I've yet to meet anyone who realistically wants the UK to go back to an Amm reserve - I think fatshark was throwing in the quote from the BKF because it contrasts greatly with your view of the beekeeping world.

There are plenty people in Ireland who disagree, and they have their fair share of carnie and buckfast keepers who have described the Galtee product in terms you know very well.....lol as you also know I tried them here myself....no better than our basic local stock, but the good ones were worth persisting with.

Of course I have an opinion, and I don't mind it being challenged. too little of that happens in beekeeping and certain individuals have their opinions accepted as facts...just because they say it. I often describe beekeeping, especially in the UK, as 'opinion rich, fact deficient'.

Some most definitely do have agendas, and to an extent so do I. I am in favour of a properly REGULATED status quo and will argue the case for that.

I have met the Amm fanatics as I am sure you have too, and it is not in dispute that some, not all in the Celtic extremities, are of that view. I did indeed over egg the case with fatshark because the question was not about what would happen, but what would need to happen if a special status on genetic grounds was to be granted to the UK to allow border closure *on that basis*. It wont happen.

That people have agendas beyond the superficial issue was well illustrated in recent times by the response to two events.......the fly larvae in the dead bees cluster in Switzerland and the tragic (and all the authorities now admit it was an over reaction) destruction of a full load of packages from Italy bound for northern Europe due to defective paperwork accompanying the load. The cries, not just on here, were that SHB had been confirmed (it never was so why did people say that?) and close the borders now, and the destruction was described by a few people as a triumph, and showed we should close the borders now. I maybe got more grouchy than I should have with these cases.......