Bees Starving

[Nellie]

There are 449 apiaries (apiaries, not colonies) within 10km of my apiary in Dulwich according to Beebase.

Wow, I thought I was doing well with 138.

 

[Polyanwood]

I would love us to do the maths... myself not my specialist subject....would love help.

How many colonies can a square kilometer support? How many square kilometers are there in a circle with a 10km radius?

 

[BeeJayBee]

How many square kilometers are there in a circle with a 10km radius?

3.14 x (10 x 10)?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

What's a Kilometre? is it a kind of French cake?

 

[thorn]

I understand that it's been proposed by the government that all nectar giving plants in the north of England are to be relocated in the southeast, at the expense of the whole nation, as it is felt that only people who live there are fit and proper bee keepers deserving of their own honey.

 

[OXFORDBEE]

Thats just what i was led to believe....keep piling as many colonys into London as possible,there can never be too many for such an abundant never ending source of nectar.

Absolutely, there's a dammn good binned coke-can flow in the tourist season!

 

[richardbees]

BA,

My honey yield/ hive hasn't changed since 1990.....when there were far, far fewer beekeepers South of the Thames. There's more than enough forage......just look on 'GoogleEarth'

 

[Polyanwood]

That is not what the honey yield surveys show Richard. That you are bucking the trend is impressive though.

 

[Tom Bick]

Is the honey yield survey just for London, inner and greater, or for the whole country?

Either way I would like to have a look please if possible can you post a link or point me in the right direction.

If the figure for Greater London is average 31 lbs per colony I wonder if this includes nuc’s, splits ect. Also as with the rest of the country an explosion of new beekeepers starting with one or two nuc’s that given the time of year when they get them may produce a bit of honey but most people would just be happy to get the nuc built up and through the winter and then watch it swarm three times the following spring.

Some people in an average year will have no or very little honey and others will have plenty.

I last year with 3 hives averaged 63 lbs. This year running 7 hives I will average less partly due to the poor spring but I will go into the winter with a good few nuc’s after my fingers crossed successful queen rearing and if included in any survey will make my yield look low.

Personally I would be happy with 60 lbs total from all my hives (and a good bit of unripe to make plenty of mead and marmalade ) but I know this just wont happen apart from disaster they just have good forage spread across the whole season and if one part fails another will compensate. Last year a great spring and then a big not experienced for me in the previous 4 years a big June gap.

I don’t count success in the amount of honey, I like honey but the extraction bit is a sort of anticlimax to me and a bit of a faf one can do without. The more important bit is that the bees are healthy and well looked after.

 

[sandysman]

There are 449 apiaries (apiaries, not colonies) within 10km of my apiary in Dulwich according to Beebase.

QUOTE]

And these stats can't take into account the apiaries that are NOT registered so what would the true figure be?

Andy

 

[richardbees]

About15 years ago Kent Beekeepers asked me to visit a house in central Brixton where they had been told a beekeeper had just died and to assess the situation.

It was a little terrace house alongside the railway embankment and there were 15 ramshackle hives in the back garden, at least a further ten hives scattered along the embankment.

Most of the ground floor was devoted to a big commercial extractor, honey jar/hive parts storage etc. He wasn't a member of any association but just made a good living selling honey - all his widow wanted was a good price for the kit.

London is teeming with 'off the radar screen' beekeepers. imho mainly Polish and Afro-caribbean....... There's no point in joining your local BKA if you know what you're doing and couldn't give a toss!

 

[BeeJayBee]

Is the honey yield survey just for London, inner and greater, or for the whole country?

There's a 2011 Honey Yield Survey within the Press releases on BBKA site.

Close the gaps for the link to work >> http://www.bb ka . org. uk /files/library / honey_ survey_ letterhead_ 1319642708.pdf

 

[rae]

The hive that I keep in central london has just had its second super added. Honey gathering is certainly slower than in the country - some of those hives have filled 2 supers in the last week and are now on 4 supers.

 

[Into the lions den]

Be wary of too much reliance on BeeBase statistics. I have raised the issue with our local administrator and got back a reply that indicated that, in general, any location that EVER had bees on it registered on the system remains on it for all time unless specifically removed. Thus a large number of the locations are likely to be inactive. When I get a system generated alert about a disease find there are a large number of my locations listed, but as we notify on every bee shift, all the places we ever used since the start of the Scottish use of Beebase, even the transient one month migratory ones following the crops, are listed. Only about a fifth of then are actual active places.

 

[Tom Bick]

Yes that does not surprise me.

Although there may be as many non registered sites as there are old no longer occupied sites still registered on BeeBase.

 

[oliver90owner]

Although there may be as many non registered sites as there are old no longer occupied sites still registered on BeeBase.

Yes, that might be the case....but if, as time advances, there is no updated truth the bee base numbers (of no longer used sites) will surely keep rising and the disparity with the truth will ever get wider?

 

[alanf]

Although there may be as many non registered sites as there are old no longer occupied sites still registered on BeeBase.

As with all data, first question is why was it collected? From the FERA point of view they want a list of sites to check when a notifiable disease occurs. If a commercial keeper has many sites and only a few are occupied, that's not a problem because a phone call can reduce that to active sites.

The danger of any such system is that a few unregistered sites are acting as disease reservoirs, never inspected, never cleared. There is a lot of bbka encouragement for starting keepers to register. That is a shrewd tactic, since with decent geographic spread of bee interested people, if there is an outbreak one question to those registered will be what other apiaries exist locally?

Where the amount of data does become a problem is where lots register then give up, lots of extra tracing to do. Of course the biggest timewasters are the untraceables, moved on without updating details. Which is why I think FERA are asking for local bka membership lists. There's a lot you can do to clean databases by using cross referenced information. Factors such as last known update become important, which I think is why the beebase recording now has inspection details. There does come a point where knocking on doors is inevitable, but there's a lot that can be done to compile 90% accurate lists before doing the time consuming and expensive legwork.

There will be under recording because of long standing unregistered keepers, there will be over recording of those given up or moved on. The incentives to clean that data have to be seen from the FERA disease control perspective not from population studies. While it's interesting to see how many bees are competing with yours locally, the incentives to clean the data are not concerned with being 100% accurate or to optimise stocking levels. Likewise, the honey yield is about gathering year on year economic impact. Surveys are of self selecting keepers by region, the value is in trends, not absolute numbers.

Just my reading between the lines based on working with large datasets.

 

[rae]

Checked my London hive before going to work this morning. As I have not managed to inspect for 2 weeks, I was sure the queen would be long gone. As it happened, she was there, with no sign of swarm preparation at all. Not even a play cup. Just a happy hive full of bees, starting to fill the second super. I'm starting to think that the forage is not so good, despite a 60 foot horse chestnut 100 yards away that has been in full bloom for the last 2 weeks. The hives in Berkshire are all much further ahead, filling a super every few days at the moment, and all have now been artificially swarmed.

 

[richardbees]

rae

Is your London hive in the O207 area...i.e. not surrounded by houses with front and back gardens ?

I've compared my yield with friend's hives in Warwicks (No OSR) and it's always been no contest. Wheat, cattle or Rye don't offer much for a bee.....

richard