2012 BBKA Honey Survey

[Polyanwood]

Results are in. As we expected, honey yields across the country are down with Northern Ireland being less affected and London being most adversely affected with an average of 5.8 lbs per hive.

http://www.facebook.com/download/205877069546597/BBKA%20Honey%20Survey%202012%20embargoed%20press%20release.pdf

 

[dpearce4]

Hi Pollyanwood

Any chance you can download it off facebook and then put the pdf on here. Im not a member of facebook so cant see it.

cheers

 

[Polyanwood]

That will be my technical challenge for today I shall boldly go and attempt it.

 

[Polyanwood]

Any good?

I have attempted to attach

 

[dpearce4]

Fantastic that worked. Cheers for that.

Looking at that my 220lb from my hives was actually very good. Even though it was over 60% down on last year for the same number of hives.

 

[greengumbo]

Had a quick scan.

What's a honey index ?

Any ideas of Scottish production this year....Murray ?

 

[sunhivebee]

Hi Pollyanwood

Any chance you can download it off facebook and then put the pdf on here. Im not a member of facebook so cant see it.

cheers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20139062

BBKA statement reported here

 

[susbees]

Had a quick scan.

What's a honey index ?

Any ideas of Scottish production this year....Murray ?

Running out fast is what I hear

 

[djg]

Thanks for this info, Polyanwood

 

[Finman]

.
I cannot say but wau for that yield.

Second word is sigh about you weather from March to September, when I followed it.

In Finland yield was about 30 kg. Very low in our figures.

 

[DanBee]

What's a honey index ?

Looks like they're using it as a baseline; index = 100 for the national average.

 

[alanf]

What's a honey index ?

Looks like 100 plus the percentage difference from the national average. It adds confusion, but I can't see what else.

Several factors make the reported figures uncertain, such as only covering a self selected ten percent or so of the membership. For many of the smaller scale and novice beekeepers honey production is unlikely to have been a top priority compared with colony survival, learning and swarm control. That may well be behind the poor yields reported in the Lonndon area. The one feature which could have been useful is running it a third year with similar methodology, That would have made results comparable. But it's only "more or less" comparable because they have added questions and included online submission which might have skewed the results.

 

[Hivemaker.]

What actual use is this imformation about honey yields to ordinary beekeepers.

 

[Chris B]

Any way you look at it is shockingly bad.

But I still can't get my head round a 30lb average in a normal year. Most bees do that on rape before they've even thought about swarming. I'd get a 30lb average if all I did was take supers on and off, feed and treat for varroa in autumn. No inspections at all. Maybe buy a few queens for splits to replace losses in autumn too.

 

[Tom Bick]

The survey mentions 2712 beekeepers took part in the survey this is something close to 10-15% of the bbka membership alone and a bit low for me to give a good accurate survey, then add to this 56% of the people in survey attended some sort of training this year this suggests to me that the survey has a high percentage of new beekeepers.

 

[Chris B]

Possibly Tom. However, our experience has been that it takes months and months to get new beekeepers joined up to BBKA so I bet loads of this years beginners weren't even on the books when the survey happened.

 

[tonybloke]

didn't respond to the survey myself, but I got about 80lb per hive, and no osr nr here

 

[richardbees]

Any way you look at it is shockingly bad.

Chris - no it's not, for lots of reasons and here's two:

A) Exceptionally bad weather - the worst I can remember in 20+ years
B) Very high % of new inexperienced beeks participating

 

[Nic Rhodes]

The survey seems to over estimate honey yields up here, truely terrible, by far the worst I have seen in 35+ years. Re training, I would expect well over 75% of our member to have attended some training course each year as the norm. You are never too experienced to not learn more. There is going to be huge variation across the country so drawing conclusions might be difficult outside global figures. I filled in the survey

 

[richardbees]

Avoid Tescos for sugar, Tesco reports fall in half-year profits by 11.6%

I do admire a man with a mission!