Chris, sorry, but keepers in my area have been experiencing losses for the last few years. Severe losses, as have other keepers I am in contact with in many areas of France, and the world.
I hope you were not insinuating that we were intentionally poisoning our bees... whatever way you meant it... it definitely came off as sounding that way.
Our hives are all organic, as Brian has mentioned, as we produce royal jelly.
Last year the analysis came back with high levels of bt toxin, mostly in the pollen.
We can only wait and see this year, still waiting for the envelope.
Too far from me as well but you can take a look at these people on my site and add your details should you wish.
English speaking Beekeepers for swarm collection
and there is a French list HERE
What type of hive do you have?
Chris
Danuta, welcome to the Hive. I have no swarms or colonies to split here and anyway I am far too far away from you. If you have your brood box completely ready, that is to say frames and foundations in place at least, then find a local beekeeper or two which you can find by asking people selling local honey at markets who are usually keepers. Do not make my mistake and pay far too much for your starter colony but ask the keepers for advice and ask where you can find colonies. If you have somebody nice around then you can get them cheap or, as I have now had, free. Waiting for swarms is like playing roulette. Either none or one turns up on the lower branches of a tree four metres from your hives (three years ago that happened to me). There is no simple reply to your request since there is that roulette wheel probability. No doubt, once you are established anyway, there will be local swarms you don't want, that is sod's law. If you have kept bees before then ask, Zoe particularly knows her stuff but I am just a total amateur who enjoys having them - and the honey of course - but mainly keep them as pollinators.
On numbers of bees and environment we are one. I always have a couple of hives resting for maintenance but could easily have them back out, if possible I try to get them if colonies split because there are people who are always on the lookout for new stock. I am happy to have them go. I am in a small river valley, roughly speaking between two UNESCO listed villages, the edge of a forest and very free from any chemical anything.
However, as good as forums can be, they are not science and the beekeepers I still know from my many years in the Cambridgeshire association are divided. Like you, many of them are surrounded by cash crops and have no problems. Others do. Most of the people well away from the chemicals seem OK bar varroa which a couple have said has got bad recently, but little colony collapse which quite a few treat as almost mythical. That does not mean it does not happen elsewhere. But they treat is as it doesn't. That is where forums also seem to go too often. If scientists are saying there are problems then it is worth looking and listening. If they are proven wrong fine, if not then if people do not keep open minds then they have only have themselves to blame for not wanting to know. The USA is having problems, some states in particular, but parts of Europe are also giving not entirely positive data. To dismiss is to walk into the domains the big agrochemical companies prefer, I question because that is what I have spent much of my life doing as a researcher and some of what I find when following up on the patchy media disturbs me. If you are not disturbed fine, but others here may be as or more disturbed by it than I am. To simply tell them they are wrong if they believe it is a discourtesy at the very least.
The problem is Brian that bee keepers aren't being put out of business in Europe and if they are it isn't because there are external problems keeping bees.
This has all been discussed ad nauseum on the bee keeping forums in the UK and been laughed out of town.
We should perhaps remind ourselves that before people kept bees there would have been relatively few feral colonies and large areas of France and the UK where honey bees would have been absent.
I can also say that I have experienced no obvious problems as a result of neonics or any other cides with my bees despite being completely surrounded by nothing but the crops they have been used on, specifically Maize, Sunflower and Oil Seed Rape all of which my bees utilise.
I'm certainly not a lover of chemical warfare and our land is completely chemical free and as I've mentioned I don't use anything at all on my hives or bees and I continually find myself with too many bees.
Chris
No, I disagree. It perhaps belongs in both. The studies are saying that honeybees are being killed off. Science, as in the social sciences where I belong, consists of two sides of every argument, neither of which should be dismissed. I absolutely agree about the industrialisation of agriculture. The extent to which chemicals are used is appalling. It is precisely why local beekeepers are being put out of business, it was what gave us almost fauna free areas in East Anglia whilst I lived there and imagining that our bees are not at threat and dismissing it is rather a dangerous attitude at present.
Certainly, Avaaz are not scientific, nor is their language and they do not put up issues unless they are asked to and can provide sound reasons why they should. The US journal articles are there is you wish to go searching, what the Breeze et al study says is not good news for honeybees.
As for not including other types of bees in this, that should be left to a majority view but not just a difference of opinion between two people.
You can find thousands of studies all suggesting all manner of different things about different types of bee, however I thought this was "The Hive" and about honey bees where there are no overall problems.
This is how the Avaaz document starts.
"Right now, billions of bees are dying. Already, there are nowhere near enough honeybees in Europe to pollinate the crops, and in California -- the biggest food producer in the US -- beekeepers are losing 40% of their bees each year."
How crass is that? We never had all these crops 20 or 30 years ago either here in Europe or in California, it's about the industrialisation of our agri business including honey bees.
Perhaps this should be in the Nature Group if you want to include all the solitary and other social bees, what do you think?
Chris
Two recent peer reviewed academic articles just to dispute your denial:
Tom D. Breeze, Bernard E. Vaissière, Riccardo Bommarco, Theodora Petanidou, Nicos Seraphides, Lajos Kozák, Jeroen Scheper, Jacobus C. Biesmeijer, David Kleijn, Steen Gyldenkærne, Marco Moretti, Andrea Holzschuh, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, Jane C. Stout, Meelis Pärtel, Martin Zobel and Simon G. Potts, Agricultural Policies Exacerbate Honeybee Pollination Service Supply-Demand Mismatches across Europe, University of Reading, 8 January 2014.
Hannah Feltham, Kirsty Park and Dave Goulson, Field realistic doses of pesticide imidacloprid reduce bumblebee pollen foraging efficiency, in Ecotoxicology, April 2014, Volume 23, Issue 3: 317-323.
Sorry about the latter, you can probably see the abstract but I am Springer published so have free access on Springerlink. I am not a natural scientist and do not understand either using their language but I get the gist of it. You get fed up with the subject and spend hours debunking the myth do you? Well, take a serious look at what is appearing in peer reviewed journals about all kinds of bee, not just European honeybees, and keep on disputing. I decided to give the benefit of the doubt this time and forget the media approach and look for recent work instead. But if you know better, please provide the hard scientific evidence and we can all sigh with relief.
That's what I thought Brian and a subject that has been beaten to death with bad journalism, bad "science", bad beekeepers and a massive gravy train that feeds on it.
If you mess with bees in an intensive, industrial manner then expect problems which is largely the case in the USA although the majority of small keepers in the States have no problems.
Anyway, it's the same in Europe there are no issues that aren't the responsibility of the keeper as a general rule apart from the odd isolated incident of poisoning. I get fed up with the nonsense that I have to contend with every day on this subject and spend endless hours debunking the myth that "our bees are in trouble", they simply aren't.
Chris
Find out Chris. Scientists have been saying that modern agriculture, especially GMO crops and the agrochemicals that go with them, plus some areas pollution, are depleting populations in some countries. The USA has very openly acknowledged it to begin with. Try Avaaz and follow the links they are showing, media I know but they will lead you to proper information.
What loss of bees?
Chris
Avaaz.org are running a campaign to do something about the massive loss of bees worldwide. They are asking for donations from $2 upward. Take a look.
Oh yes Chris, that was the subject of a seminar when I was a member of Cambridgeshire Beekeepers Asssociation. Several keepers went away looking very sheepish after asking questions about how their bees might have died and when asked a few questions back by the speaker there had been answers like buying cheap paint for their hives at a car boot sale. No doubt the list is endless. As far as I understand it from Zoe, she is pretty well bio, especially because of the royal jelly they harvest which I gather is far more valuable if no chemicals have been near it.
Worth remembering that poisoning can come from any number of sources and although I wouldn't suggest it here it is far from unknown for keepers themselves to be the culprit.
Chris
Zoe, one of our local professional keepers gave up two years ago, now has around 20 hives for herself only, but had upward of a couple of hundred I guess. A quite large area of woodland was cleared for colza, maize, sunflowers and other crops. The crop spraying early spring of the first growing year killed off so many bees in one apiary she was shocked, then the second and third years she was decimated in another. She had taken over her father's hives, so that was second generation keeping on four sites in that area with no problems for well over half a century. Until land use changes. In her case the analysis was as Chris is suggesting, poisoning. Varroa was present but under control so probably didn't even weaken them.
Strangely though, the next nearest commercial keeper is in an entirely commercial cash crop area (his honey is bland and boring for it) but never has any problems. Luckily my handful of hives is on the edge of forest and grazing land only, 1.5 km to the nearest cash crops, and whilst they are spraying in the area at present there is so much flowing blackthorn my ladies need not go far, so no problems. Fingers crossed.
Nonetheless I too look forward to the analysis.
How interesting, it has to be poisoning from one source or another. Look forward to seeing the analysis.
Many bees left in the dead outs?
Chris
Well guys, out of our three apiaries, we have very different stories to tell.... the hives we left in the Var overwinter, they're all good, thriving, weighing heavy, and we can't wait for that time when you see fresh burr, and the honey supers go on.... one of our apiaries here in Haute savoie is good, most hives are out and about, but sluggish, but the second apiary, we've lost all but three hives (out of 75) it COULD be varroa, because we were a bit late with the last treatment for them, but it looks as if they were severely weakened before the varroa took over. There was a wheat trial beside the last apiary, and, that obviously has something to do with it. Samples sent off for analysis.
Much the same. I had a bit of a clear out. Couple of colonies looked like they needed a bit of feeding a while ago, now they are having an overpopulation thing for the time of year. Somebody called to ask if I wanted a swarm! What? In the middle of March. Our plum trees looked like it had snowed on them, then to stand under them was deafening.
The phantom story below from January looks like it might have been wax moths. I have dug a couple of cocoons out of the supers with the damage. Since I repaired them with wood filler no further damage though.
What will this year bring?
Totally amazing spring this year, like the old days. Colza now in flower here and only lost one colony which is ridiculous but these things average out over the years. However it does leave me with rather too many colonies for this time of year.
How's everyone else doing?
Chris
Let us know if you ever come up with the truth behind the phantom in yer hives!!