These days, it’s getting fashionable to keep bees but people don't take on enough separate hives." "There were times when people kept a lot more hives so that they could earn a bit extra from selling the honey. Added to threat of varroa mites, another problem is that beekeepers don’t keep enough hives to be able to select and compensate for losses, says Maske. 50 years ago, there were almost three-times as many colonies. Another major problem is the illness nosema and the effects of pesticides, especially the controversial nicotinoids," he says.īeekeeper Friedel Mirbach looks after bees in his garden and in orchardsĬurrently, there are about 750,000 bee colonies in Germany. Then there is a lack of food, if the right plants are not available once the spring has passed. "The main threat comes from the varroa mite and the viruses it carries. Maske, who tends to about 50 bee colonies, says many bee keepers have found the same results: regionally adapted bees can cope better with the challenges of modern life. Kryger says the most effective way to maintain the bee population's natural diversity is to strengthen the breeding programs with local honey bees." It would also help to prevent the collapse of bee colonies, optimize sustainable productivity and make it possible to maintain continual adaptation to environmental changes," he says.įellow beekeeper president of the German Association of Beekeepers, Peter Maske, agrees. But Kryger's team has found that bees which are adapted to their local environment fare much better in their chances of survival than bees that which have been imported from a different region.Īccording to COLOSS, local queens live an average of 83 days longer than colonies with imported queens. Usually, beekeepers purchase queen bees from other regions to maintain their bee colonies. Kryger and other scientists from an association called Prevention of Honey Bee Colony Losses (COLOSS) have carried out research to find out how bees can have the best chances of survival. Per Kryger, a senior scientist at Denmark’s Aarhus University, says "a world without bees would be a whole lot poorer." In recent years the use of pesticides in agriculture, and attacks by parasites and diseases, have had a detrimental impact on bees.
The global decline of bee populations is a huge concern. According to the Germany University of Hohenheim, bees provide services to the figure of 70 billion dollars per year. Bees play a fundamental role in food production: they pollinate a wide range of crops and the honey variety delivers valuable food products to humans.