With the amount of things that have happened in the last few years it makes me think the world has gone out of balance!
Native bee keepers have reported colony losses over the last year, some up to 20% and many stingless bee colonies have declined in strength which has led to minimal splitting of colonies and businesses seeing a small downsizing.
Without extra, spare or sufficiently healthy colonies new designs can’t be trialed. Some honey supers are being completely ignored as weak colonies don’t have excess resources. There’s quite a few design trials and tests that can’t be progressed until the conditions improve.
The stingless bee industry will have a new honey food standard available soon but we’re still way behind on product development with regard to honey super designs, extraction and processing methods. Most, if not all product development is carried out by very small business or backyard enthusiasts and the last few years has seen a virtual hault to any progress, though I’m sure there’s atleast one crazy person out there with some kind of secret project we don’t know about yet.
The weather and generally poor conditions for bees over the last couple of years have had a severe negative impact on all kinds of research and testing and I know quite a few bee keepers that in a holding pattern. There’s quite a few current build and design articles on this website that need updating and we’re just waiting for the availability of strong healthy colonies.
Ok that’s enough of that negative stuff, lets get back on track…
Native bees are very resilient and can bounce back quickly with good conditions so I’m hoping we’ve seen the end of the poor conditions and I’m looking forward to seeing much progress over the next few years for the industry and this website.
The push will be on to develop honey super designs and efficient and clean extraction systems. Another factor in the slow development of honey supers and the market in general is that sellers can get more money by selling a colony of bees as opposed to producing and selling honey and when colony growth is slow no one worries about honey.
So get your thinking caps on and design that magical honey super!
