Digestate Spreading

[CLB]

Does anyone know if the use of digestate (commercial fertiliser produced from the anaerobic digestion of kitchen waste) has any effect on honey bees?

It has to be one of the most revolting, smelliest substances ever known and the farmer who farms the field 100 feet from my bees is spreading it around with gusto. Unfortunately my house and many neighbours houses are only about 15 feet from the field. In the past he has been subject to a court case brought by Environmental Health, but in the end the judge sided with him and his lawyers, citing "best practicable means" of application. He sprays the dark liquid over several days (looks like animal slurry, but smells MUCH worse), then leaves the rain to wash it into the ground, therefore it can take two weeks for the smell to abate to a level where you only feel sick part of the time. I'd be very interested in any thoughts people might have?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

why should it have any effect on bees?

 

[CLB]

On the basis that the smell is so strong it literally takes your breath away, it makes you feel nauseous & you can taste it in your mouth. I wondered if there were any known effects on bees? In Europe it has to be injected into the soil, not left on the surface & within a few years will also be law in the UK from what I’ve read.

 

[Ian123]

Personally I think you’ll find they’ll love having a drink from it. Maybe they should spread more chemicals instead!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

On the basis that the smell is so strong it literally takes your breath away, it makes you feel nauseous & you can taste it in your mouth. I wondered if there were any known effects on bees?

Bees love to paddle in the damp spots on slurry pits - nothing they like better than slurping away at a fresh puddle of pee or a cowpat. The digestate is just compost produced on an industrial scale, around here they bag it and sell it to gardeners as a soil conditioner or potting compost ingredient. Albeit it has a distinct ammonic tinge It certainly isn't toxic waste.

 

[CLB]

Interesting, thank you. I have seen bees paddling in wet compost and even drinking from it, but our experience of digestate is on another level. Maybe it just affects humans more? The type this farmer uses is overpowering and smells ‘chemically’ as well as of ammonia (some neighbours have described it as dog sick, mixed with rotting meat etc). It’s no joke if you drive somewhere for several hours and when you open the boot you can smell it again. Lucky bees if they’re not affected!

 

[Wilco]

Bit sad to hear the farmer's been taken to court over it though... Preferable to use recycled waste (especially given the amount of food we waste as a society) rather than artificial fertilisers as the latter are often fossil fuel derived. Glad to hear the judge saw sense though.

From what I understand they have a fairly limited window of when they can apply fertiliser so hopefully you'll be back to enjoying the countryside again soon.

 

[Murox]

Up here they only spray slurry etc on the fields when its raining or due to rain later that day. The stink only lasts a short while.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

it also means a lot of it runs straight into water courses and causes all kinds of issues to the riparian ecosystem

 

[CLB]

Unfortunately the farmer has a long and complicated history with the community and authorities. With the spreading of digestate that triggered the court case, the Environmental Health officers judged that he was causing a statutory nuisance in residents gardens and inside several houses. The case appeared to hinge around the method of spreading and the type and sheer quantity of digestate used. Perhaps lessons have been learned and tolerance developed on all sides now? As Wilco writes it is a temporary unpleasantness and my question really was concern for the bees which we have only started keeping in our garden this year.

 

[CLB]

I should add in reply to Jenkins last post; the farmer used so much, over so many days, it was literally running off the fields into the drains in the road. Unfortunately at the time we’d hit a heat wave (in February) with no rain for weeks.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

sounds to me like he was getting his own back on the NIMBYs who objected to agricultural activities taking place in a rural area and which had him dragged through the courts

 

[Wilco]

Hopefully he's preparing it for OSR and you'll get a cracking spring honey crop (if you extract quickly enough!). Then you could give him a jar as a thank you, make friends then end up with access to the rest of his fields for when you have 'too many' hives for your garden...

 

[CLB]

Anything is possible and he does grow rape on that field every few years. It would be much better for everyone to get on.

 

[Ian123]

Anything is possible and he does grow rape on that field every few years. It would be much better for everyone to get on.

Don’t worry next year he’ll get a cockerel that crows

 

[Wilco]

Don’t worry next year he’ll get a cockerel that crows

Nowt wrong with that! I live in a town and after my first hatch I had to relocate most of my cockerels to the freezer as my wife didn't like the crowing. Multiple neighbours actually said they liked it (like me)! Now keep my hens where the sheep are, in a rural area and have had more NIMBY problems there than I did at home.

 

[Michael ECB's]

Does anyone know if the use of digestate (commercial fertiliser produced from the anaerobic digestion of kitchen waste) has any effect on honey bees?

It has to be one of the most revolting, smelliest substances ever known and the farmer who farms the field 100 feet from my bees is spreading it around with gusto. Unfortunately my house and many neighbours houses are only about 15 feet from the field. In the past he has been subject to a court case brought by Environmental Health, but in the end the judge sided with him and his lawyers, citing "best practicable means" of application. He sprays the dark liquid over several days (looks like animal slurry, but smells MUCH worse), then leaves the rain to wash it into the ground, therefore it can take two weeks for the smell to abate to a level where you only feel sick part of the time. I'd be very interested in any thoughts people might have?

Two ways to look at this...
Is the farmer farming 100 feet from your bees or are your bees a 100 feet from his farm?
We have a digester here that produces 30k litters of digestate a day as well as many many many many bees..... No issues what so ever....
Actually, if your bees are foraging oon his crops your bees will be far healthier for it, perhaps drop off one of the larger bottles of honey as a thank you..

A bit of smell is all round a much healthier option than most commercial fertilisers... This goes for crops or grazing livestock.
I pump this stuff out 7 days a week as a foliar feed.... My place smells great
My dairy cattle love the pastures and it smells like the starting point of bacon...
That said, Im a farmer and dont really smell it anymore... Nudge nudge - wink wink...

 

[Patrick1]

I think you under estimate the intelligence of the bees, they would move away from an environment they didn’t like, instead of moving to a rural area then taking the farmers to task !

 

[oxnatbees]

I hope no one will take offense if I use this forum to actually answer the OP's question.

Bees sometimes abscond from really bad smells. I picked up a "swarm" yesterday (Aug 24th!) which may be one such absconding colony.

Old books from skep beekeeping days warn not to keep bees near "bad smells", which I think is polite code for cesspits (no drains in 17th century cottages!). I know someone who had 2 swarms abscond from a hive, one factor turned out to be it was too near smelly chickens. Another swarm absconded when it was hived next to a just-creosoted fence.

It takes a lot more to make an established colony abandon its brood and stores, but the smell WILL stress them, if only by drowning out their usual communication. And established colonies do sometimes abandon ship: a year or 2 ago this happened with lots of Californian colonies during wildfires which killed all nearby forage and left the sky dark as dusk for 2 weeks. So I would expect your bees to be grumpy for a week or two, and if you were planning anything particularly invasive, maybe leave it 2 weeks.

I would be interested to know if you notice any impact on your honey's taste.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I hope no one will take offense if I use this forum to actually answer the OP's question.

Bees sometimes abscond from really bad smells. I picked up a "swarm" yesterday (Aug 24th!) which may be one such absconding colony.

Old books from skep beekeeping days warn not to keep bees near "bad smells", which I think is polite code for cesspits (no drains in 17th century cottages!). I know someone who had 2 swarms abscond from a hive, one factor turned out to be it was too near smelly chickens. Another swarm absconded when it was hived next to a just-creosoted fence.

It takes a lot more to make an established colony abandon its brood and stores, but the smell WILL stress them, if only by drowning out their usual communication. And established colonies do sometimes abandon ship: a year or 2 ago this happened with lots of Californian colonies during wildfires which killed all nearby forage and left the sky dark as dusk for 2 weeks. So I would expect your bees to be grumpy for a week or two, and if you were planning anything particularly invasive, maybe leave it 2 weeks.

I would be interested to know if you notice any impact on your honey's taste.

I'm interested to know how the conclusion was reached that being near chickens or creosote constituted a factor?