Direct Economic Impact Assessment of Winter Honeybee Colony Losses in Three European Countries

Despina Popovska Stojanov,Aleksandar Uzunov,Miroljub Golubovski,Robert Brodschneider,Jiří Danihlík,Lazo Dimitrov,Sreten Andonov

doi:10.3390/agriculture11050398

Abstract

Honeybees are of great importance because of their role in pollination as well as for hive products. The population of managed colonies fluctuates over time, and recent monitoring reports show different levels of colony losses in many regions and countries. The cause of this kind of loss is a combination of various factors, such as the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, viruses, pesticides, management practices, climate change, and other stress factors. Having in mind that the economic aspect of honeybee colony losses has not been estimated, a pioneer effort was made for developing a methodology that estimates the economic impact of honeybee colony losses. Winter loss data was based on 2993 answers of the COLOSS standard questionnaire survey of honeybee winter colony losses for 2016/2017. In addition, market and financial data were used for each country. In a comparative analysis, an assessment on the economic impact of colony losses in Austria, Czechia, and Macedonia was made. The estimation considered the value of the colonies and the potential production losses of the lost colonies and of surviving but weak colonies. The direct economic impact of winter honeybee colony losses in 2016/2017 in Austria was estimated to be about 32 Mio €; in Czechia, 21 Mio €; and in Macedonia, 3 Mio €. Economic impact reflects the different value levels in the three countries, national colony populations, and the magnitude of colony losses. This study also suggests that economic losses are much higher than the subsidies, which underlines the economic importance of honeybees for the agricultural sector.

Highlights

Honeybees are economically important managed pollinators for crops and wild plants [1,2,3,4,5]
The data on winter honeybee colony losses were collected by the citizen science crowdsourcing concept in Austria (AT), Czech Republic (CZ), and Republic of Macedonia (MK) in spring 2017
Atypical beekeeping operations with more than two times standard deviation from the mean of the total value of losses within a class were excluded from the sample. This means that data from 1570 beekeepers with 31,096 colonies were left for economic loss assessment in AT, which covers 8.8% from the total 354,080 colonies [39] in the country before winter 2016/2017

Summary

Introduction

Honeybees are economically important managed pollinators for crops and wild plants [1,2,3,4,5]. Though they are not solely responsible for the pollination of cultivated crops, their exact economic contribution to agricultural production is difficult to estimate [6]. The honeybees’ economic importance lays in the production of hive products such as honey, pollen, beeswax, propolis, bee venom, and royal jelly. Nucs, and packages are important trade products too [7]. Honey is by far the most important product and is globally traded [8]. In Europe, most beekeepers are backyard or sideline beekeepers producing for the local market, but there are a few professional beekeeping operations making a regular income from beekeeping and hive products [9,10]

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