Insurance.

[Black Comb]

If I estimate a hive at £400 then £8 p.a. is reasonable.
Price of 2 lbs of honey. (make that extractor turn longer to pay for it)

 

[PaleoPerson]

Just a few points that I picked up on:

1/ The Liability and BDI are two very different things covered by different companies

2/ The liability insurance itself composes of multiple policies from more than one insurer (this is where the £5m and £2m figures arise).

3/ There appears there is a £250/£500 single claim excess for liability claims, excluding personal injury. But when looking at the documents, it is unclear where and what the excesses are.

4/ 'hive products' that are covered by the liability insurance is limited and quote "These include all presentations of honey, wax (polish/candles), pollen, royal jelly etc. etc. but not more complex products such as cosmetics, balms or creams. BBKA made the decision to exclude these products a few years ago in order to keep the premium reasonable".

 

[wilderness]

£10/hive seems reasonable.

PaleoPerson, I had AFB in one of my colonies last year and the BI destroyed the brood box as well as the frames. He scorched the open mesh floor and the crown board. Payout was ~£70

BDI - Brood Disease Insurance so it doesn't cover the bees.

With current BDI the more times you get AFB the less the insurance pays out. As I'm in an AFB hot-spot that hurts

Right behind you PH

 

[grizzly]

Grizzly?

£60 per year per hive? Inclusive of bees? Nucs currently running at £140, and hives at £200 or so.

Interesting.

PH

Sorry, i should have said, perhaps £5 a month for say 10 hives ? i didnt mean each.

 

[Poly Hive]

Al right folks and the £10 per colony figure is starting to make more sense.

Oddly it was my gut instinct figure. Gives me a premium of £200 t0 £250, which is two extra nucs just to give some perspective.

More comments please

Thanks to all who have contributed and this is a very important issue.

PH

 

[MuswellMetro]

£10/hive seems reasonable.

PaleoPerson, I had AFB in one of my colonies last year and the BI destroyed the brood box as well as the frames. He scorched the open mesh floor and the crown board. Payout was ~£70

BDI - Brood Disease Insurance so it doesn't cover the bees.

With current BDI the more times you get AFB the less the insurance pays out. As I'm in an AFB hot-spot that hurts

Right behind you PH

Remeber also BDI insurance has to include all hives, and Nucs are treated as a full hive...so minimum 3 hive insurance does not cover you during swarm control for two hive and two artificial swarms....thats treated as 4 hives..as is two hives each split into hive+Nucs

 

[VEG]

I would pay £10 per hive per year

 

[Brosville]

My previous comments appear to have been taken as flippancy and/or irrelevant, so I feel I'd better elaborate..........
The BBKA scheme as it stands is worth not a lot should you make a claim, and to my mind is really not worth having, so if you are going to have an insurance scheme it should "really do the job properly" - to do the job properly will cost an arm and a leg, so as others have remarked, is it going to be commercially viable to pay a realistic amount for full coverage? - I fear the premiums would be in the "new 17 year old driver wanting a Ferrari" area.....
Think about it realistically - if you were an insurance company - what are the odds that this geezer's hives could be vandalised or nicked, sitting as they are in a clearing miles from nowhere with no real security, what are the perceived odds of his bees suffering some dreadful disease.........what would YOU reckon a reasonable sum would be to ensure you make a profit (especially if you sling in disease cover, and for over-exuberant inspectors with flamethrowers etc). I'd suggest the premiums would be so high, or the "excesses" so high that the whole thing would be unaffordable
I would suspect that the only part of the whole scheme that could be done affordably is the public liability part - the odds of them paying out are remote (only one unsuccessful case in recent history?), so if done "en bloc" for a few thousand members, probably around a tenner a year............
I think there's also been a "lumping together" of people with 2 or 3 hives, and those with "commercial" numbers of hives - personally, I'd sooner "take the risk" with the hives and occupants, and perhaps pay a tenner a year for
3rd party liability (not because I think it's necessary, just that some bally jobsworth will demand it in this litigious society in which we live ere long............)

 

[GingerNut]

I would be happy to pay £10 per year per hive.

My only concern would be the value of the hive at the end of the season when it has four supers on it full of honey - value of the honey alone could be £700?

Yours Roy

 

[Brosville]

The point I'm trying to make (that I think maybe being missed) is
that I'm all in favour of someone providing insurance instead of that offered by the BBKA, as many people misguidedly remain members only for the insurance offered as part of membership.
BUT (and I think it's a big but), I think there's a high degree of unreality as to whether really good comprehensive cover can ever be achieved anywhere near affordably - someone said he reckoned "5%" of the value of hive and contents would be reasonable......... 50% would be nearer an "economic rate" for an insurer.
As I said earlier in the thread, I think that third-party would be achievable cheaply, any other cover must be considerably more expensive/be covered by enormous excesses/exclusions/must consider how many hives/colonies.........
What it all boils down to is that the BBKA cover is pretty crap, but it IS relatively cheap - if you want to provide a replacement, you've probably got to offer at least a level of cover that isn't a lot better than that, or it'll be so expensive it'll put people off....

 

[Chris B]

Not interested in any insurance on a per hive basis. £10 per hive = £2000 or more per in premium, which interestingly is the ceiling payout per beekeeper under the BDI scheme.
I would be interested in a scheme that insured me for losses that exceeded say £1000 p.a., or in other words I'm only interested in insuring against catastrophic losses, not small scale nuisance losses. This would apply to disease, theft, vandalism etc. For such a policy I would pay a few hundred quid.
Liability is another issue entirely. £100 premium for a good solid policy would be palatable.

I think there is a cut-off point around 20 or 30 colonies when you have to abandon the idea of a per-hive policy. Maybe there aren't many beekeepers with that many hives but they account for a significant proportion of the bees in this country, and we have the most to lose. The BFA has a good liability scheme but nothing for disease, theft etc.

 

[Brosville]

I think it must be "multi-level", from a very basic "3rd party only" for skinflints like me who'll bear any other losses themselves, then on up giving varying levels of cover for hives/colonies, priced accordingly. The big thing is that it must be "economic" - the sums have to make sense from a business perspective.

 

[hedgerow pete]

something around the £10 to £15 per hive per year with a total value set of around £400 for timber /poly and bee's.

nothing for the honey crop just the hive and bee's and nothing for nucs in there first year

 

[roche]

Do we have any actuaries amongst us? Likewise solicitors? Please PM me....

 

[m100]

With current BDI the more times you get AFB the less the insurance pays out. As I'm in an AFB hot-spot that hurts

Rumours were doing the rounds a couple of years ago that some honey packers are leaving almost empty imported containers of honey open to local foragers.

 

[wilderness]

Rumours were doing the rounds a couple of years ago that some honey packers are leaving almost empty imported containers of honey open to local foragers.

Yes, I have a honey packer less than 2 miles away. Not that I'm suggesting anything by that comment

 

[Somerford]

well if it is the case and open containers are being left out then the NBU must be told !

 

[sherwood]

To my knowledge the Bee inspectors are well aware of the situation with regards honey packers particularily R in oxfordshire but I beleive they have no action in law to insist that packers actually seal supposedly empty containers or to insist on cleaning of spillages that take place. In fact as there are no hives on site they have no right of entry to examine current procedures. Pathetic isnt it another part of Defra may have rights of entry I am not sure.