tuo posted:

I expected the worst from this winter, but am actually a bit relieved about the current situation.

We had one of the historical worst bee years last year here. Terribly warm late winter, rainy spring (with a lot of canola around us though). Didn’t harvest a single drop of spring honey as all the hives were struggling. Decided not to create splits, as not a single hive showed swarm tendencies (never saw this before). Basically every hive was struggling.

Summer was okay, we harvested a little bit of summer honey, but we left each hive one full super for winter. For once, perfect conditions for Varroa treatment, and then the real strange stuff started. Gave them the typical winter food. And most of the hives just ignored it. Like…meh. Never seen that before. Switched to sirup for some, which led to better results. Still, two hives collapsed before winter. Box 100% empty, so I can only assume Varroa-damage, even though the mite count was low this year.

Speaking with other beekeepers here, there were professional beekeepers with tens of years of experience who lost - no poo poo - 50 to 80% of their hives (and some giving up), until it dawned on us. There was a emergency regulation in the EU that allowed the use of neonicotinoids that were banned before (exactly because they caused massive death in insects) to get the EU back into the sugar business for growing more sugar beets, and of course we were surrounded by so many sugar beet crops as never before.

Talked to some of the farmers, and while they weren’t ignorant, they exactly knew what they are applying, and said they are sorry, but it’s the only way to stay in the business.

Still happy we only lost two hives yet (still created two new artificial swarms with surplus queens which are doing fine, so two losses out of twenty, with two new ones), but on one isle of four hives it seems like two have nosemosis, though I can’t say it for sure yet.

Gonna be an “interesting” year seeing what damage all that stuff has done.

The kicker though is that last year Germany here saw one of the best yields of both sugar beets and wheat, and guess what? Prices for sugar and bee sirup are going up uP UP!!! YEAH!

/end rant