Honey bee colony loss rates in 37 countries using the COLOSS survey for winter 2019–2020: the combined effects of operation size, migration and queen replacement
Date
2022-09-06
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract
This article presents managed honey bee colony loss rates over winter 2019/20 resulting
from using the standardised COLOSS questionnaire in 37 countries. Six countries were from
outside Europe, including, for the first time in this series of articles, New Zealand. The 30,491
beekeepers outside New Zealand reported 4.5% of colonies with unsolvable queen problems,
11.1% of colonies dead after winter and 2.6% lost through natural disaster. This gave
an overall colony winter loss rate of 18.1%, higher than in the previous year. The winter loss
rates varied greatly between countries, from 7.4% to 36.5%. 3216 beekeepers from New
Zealand managing 297,345 colonies reported 10.5% losses for their 2019 winter (six months
earlier than for other, Northern Hemisphere, countries). We modelled the risk of loss as a
dead/empty colony or from unresolvable queen problems, for all countries except New
Zealand. Overall, larger beekeeping operations with more than 50 colonies experienced significantly
lower losses (p<0.001). Migration was also highly significant (p<0.001), with
lower loss rates for operations migrating their colonies in the previous season. A higher proportion
of new queens reduced the risk of colony winter loss (p<0.001), suggesting that
more queen replacement is better. All three factors, operation size, migration and proportion
of young queens, were also included in a multivariable main effects quasi-binomial GLM and
all three remained highly significant (p<0.001). Detailed results for each country and overall
are given in a table, and a map shows relative risks of winter loss at the regional level.
Description
Publication history: Accepted - 12 July 2022; Published online - 6 September 2022.
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Article
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Keywords
Apis mellifera, mortality, risk factors, monitoring surveys, citizen science
Citation
Gray, A., Noureddine, A., Arab, A., Ballis, A., Brusbardis, V., Bugeja Douglas, A., Cadahía, L., Charrière, J.-D., Chlebo, R., Coffey, M.F., Cornelissen, B., Costa, C.A. da, Danneels, E., Danihlík, J., Dobrescu, C., Evans, G., Fedoriak, M., Forsythe, I., Gregorc, A., Ilieva Arakelyan, I., Johannesen, J., Kauko, L., Kristiansen, P., Martikkala, M., Martín-Hernández, R., Mazur, E., Medina-Flores, C.A., Mutinelli, F., Omar, E.M., Patalano, S., Raudmets, A., San Martin, G., Soroker, V., Stahlmann-Brown, P., Stevanovic, J., Uzunov, A., Vejsnaes, F., Williams, A. and Brodschneider, R. (2022) ‘Honey bee colony loss rates in 37 countries using the COLOSS survey for winter 2019–2020: the combined effects of operation size, migration and queen replacement’, Journal of Apicultural Research. Informa UK Limited. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2022.2113329.