Bees and Honey

(asked on 7th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the levels of (a) honey production, (b) the total bee population and (c) the wild bee population in the last 10 years.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 16th October 2020

UK honey production has recovered over the past few years to around 6,500 tonnes in 2019, following a significant drop earlier in the decade. A range of factors affect production, predominantly weather, levels of pests and disease and numbers of large-scale commercial bee farmers. No formal assessment is made of honey production trends but the National Bee Unit has a key role in supporting the sector by ensuring that levels of pests and disease are kept to a minimum. This is achieved through delivery of our apiary inspection programme and the provision of education and training for beekeepers.

Honey bee numbers are dependent upon the numbers of colonies managed by beekeepers and bee farmers. In the last ten years, numbers of colonies recorded on the National Bee Unit’s BeeBase website have doubled from around 110,000 to around 220,000. It should be recognised, however, that this increase is due in part to new registrations of existing beekeepers, and not entirely to additional colonies or beekeepers.

Each year, the Government publishes an indicator of trends in populations of wild bees and other pollinators in the UK, measuring changes in the distribution of almost 400 pollinating insect species since 1980, including 137 species of bees. The indicator shows an overall decline since 1980. However, there are encouraging, but not yet definitive signs of improvement for some species. For example, from 2013 onwards, there is evidence of an overall increase in the distribution of the 137 wild bee species, although other insect pollinators have continued to decline. The annual update of the indicator was published on 15 October 2020.

Defra works with a range of partners to implement a National Pollinator Strategy to address declines in wild pollinators and concerns about bee health, alongside more specific action to support honey bees and beekeeping in the Healthy Bees Plan. This has included establishing a UK-wide pollinator monitoring and research partnership in collaboration with research institutes and volunteer organisations to gather further data on the status of UK pollinators.

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