Proposal by the Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Association (BIBBA) to:
(1) reduce the level of honey bee imports into the UK, and
(2) to improve the quality of our honey bees
Introduction
The National Pollinator Strategy (The National Pollinator Strategy: for bees and other pollinators in England, November 2014) highlights the importance of insect pollinators in our environment and in our food production. The honey bee, Apis mellifera, ranks amongst the most important of pollinators due to the number of colonies, the number of individuals in each colony, their early spring build-up and the fact that colonies can be moved to crops for pollination.
Whilst the importation of honey bees into this country is not a new thing, in recent years we have seen a big increase in the numbers of these imports
https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/public/register.cfm?
See EU Import report for figures). Concerns have been raised for the biosecurity of our honey bee population by DEFRA, by beekeepers and by beekeeping organisations. It is the official policy of the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) to discourage the import of honey bee colonies and queens partly because of this risk.
There is also growing concern about the loss, through introgression, of locally adapted strains of honey bee due to the continuous introduction of honey bees that may not be accustomed to our climate and conditions. The Rural Network for Sustainable Bee Breeding (RNSBB) (the taskforce within COLOSS for breeding and conservation) https://www.beebreeding.net/ states, ‘We believe that the safeguarding of bee biodiversity, beyond its ethical and scientific dimensions, is also of high economic interest, because in the long run locally adapted populations are better suited than imported ones to cope with prevailing environmental conditions and health threats, and thus to survive’ .
A key remit of the National Bee Unit (NBU), is stated in its “Healthy Bees Plan”, (published in 2009 by DEFRA and the Welsh Government), is
“to respond effectively to pest and disease threats and to put in place programmes to ensure a sustainable and productive future for beekeeping In England and Wales”.
The current situation with ever increasing imports of bees and queens into the UK seems to be contrary to the aims of the Healthy Bees Plan and against the interests and advice of scientists and beekeeping associations. The question must be asked as to whether anything can be done to reduce the flow of imports and to satisfy the goals of reducing biosecurity risks at the same time as increasing the quality and sustainability of our bees nationwide. An added incentive to reducing imports would be provided if a system of improving our local honey bee populations was adopted and available to all beekeepers.
Reasons for the popularity of imports
Whilst, for a long time, there has been a body of opinion wishing to see a reduction in honey bee imports, there is still an appetite and a market for imported bees, particularly queens. It is a fact that some bee farmers and other beekeepers, favour the use of imported queens in their operations.
A more developed queen rearing and breeding industry has grown up in Europe and around the world than in the UK, partly due to more favourable weather conditions, but also perhaps due to a lack of initiative by UK Government and beekeeping organizations.
DEFRA formed a committee in 2018, known as the “Queen Rearing Working Group”, with representatives of various beekeeping organisations in England, to investigate the possibilities of increasing home queen production in order to reduce the demand for imported queens. In 2018 a survey of English beekeepers was carried out to get a better understanding of the reasons for importing stock and to find out more about beekeepers’ attitudes to queen rearing.
The DEFRA committee concluded that some of the reasons that beekeepers have for imports were as follows:
• Queens are readily available
• Queens can be produced more cheaply than in UK
• Queens are available earlier in the season
• Queens are regarded as of better quality than those available in the UK
It should be noted that not all imports are checked for biosecurity risks and that they may not be checked for all possible risks.
The problems of importing bees and offering an alternative
Increased home production of queens could lessen the demand for imported queens and thus reduce the biosecurity risk of bringing in more pests and diseases. However, given the advantages that foreign producers enjoy, particularly with regard to climate and length of season, how much can we realistically expect to reduce the level of imports? Are there other advantages to home reared queens which would make them more desirable than imported ones?
150 years of imports of queens, of various sub-species, have shown that, whilst a short-term improvement in quality may be experienced, over the long-term, no improvement is achieved. On the contrary, in most areas our honey bee population is generally viewed as hybridised or, perhaps more accurately, mongrelised. The argument that importation is good for the genetic diversity of our population has been shown, by the COLOSS experiment comparing the survival of imported stock with local stock, to be unbeneficial as we are merely importing genes which may be less suited to our environment and therefore of no real benefit.
The resulting long-term effect of imports on our bee population are that they set up a vicious circle of poor-quality and often aggressive mongrelised bees that fuel the demand for more imports, providing a short-term fix but not a long-term solution.
If, as an alternative to the importation of queens, we established a National Bee Improvement Programme which selected and propagated the best local bees, a good reason could then be made for not using imported bees. Beekeepers would benefit in two ways, that is, in a reduction in the biosecurity risks associated with imports, and through the opportunity of supporting and participating in a project that could deliver a better-quality bee. Taking part in a scheme to sustainably improve our bees would provide a definite reason to refrain from the use of imported bees.