‘Bees starving’ in disastrous year for French honey

SAINT OURS: Beekeepers across France say it has been a disastrous year for honey, with bees starving to death and production plummeting by up to 80 per cent.

Mickael Isambert, a beekeeper in Saint-Ours-les-Roches in central France, lost 70pc of his honey and had to feed his colonies sugar to help them survive after a cold, rainy spring.

“It has been a catastrophic year,” said Isambert, 44, who looks after 450 hives. A beehive typically produces 15 kilos of honey a year, but this time, Isambert said his farm had only produced between five and seven kilos.

When it rains, bees “don’t fly, they don’t go out, so they eat their own honey reserves,” said his co-manager and fellow beekeeper Marie Mior. Low temperatures and heavy rainfall have prevented bees from gathering enough pollen, and flowers from producing nectar — which the insects collect to make honey.

Bad weather has affected honey producers countrywide, with spring production dropping by 80pc in some regions — figures that summer harvests will struggle to offset, said the French national beekeeping union (Unaf). Rainfall rose by 45pc on the yearly average, Unaf said in a letter to its local branches.

“With weather conditions that have been catastrophic in many regions with abundant rain... and low temperatures until late, many beekeepers’ viability is under threat,” said Unaf.

Temperatures stagnated below 18 degrees Celsius (64 Fahrenheit), the minimum temperature needed for flowers to produce nectar, said Jean-Luc Hascoet, a beekeeper in Brittany in western France who lost about 15 colonies. “For some of my colleagues it was worse,” he said.

“In June, the bee population increases and the needs of the colonies grow but as nothing was coming in, some died of hunger,” said Hascoet.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2024