Wet spring spoils beekeepers’ 2023 honey harvest
Published: Friday, Nov 10th 2023, 15:50
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Swiss beekeepers harvested 17 kilograms of honey per bee colony in 2023. This is below the long-term average of 20 kilograms. The reason for this is the wet spring, which the hot summer was unable to make up for.
The yield of spring honey fell to 6 kilograms per colony, which is less than half the long-term average, according to the Agricultural Information Service (LID) on Friday. 36 percent of bee colonies did not produce any spring honey at all.
In addition, the spring honey produced by many beekeepers was rather dark and therefore somewhat bitter. The reason: after the rainy fruit and rapeseed blossom, the bees increasingly helped themselves to honeydew from coniferous and deciduous trees. They probably also tended to fly to the more sheltered forests due to the wind and cold.
In summer, the heat hardly hindered the bees. As a result, the summer honey harvest rose to a good 11 kilograms, 2 kilograms below the average. There were major regional differences. The yield was particularly low in the east and north. There were larger harvests in western Switzerland, Graubünden and Ticino.
Once again, the same phenomenon was observed as in the poor honey years of 2019 and 2021: the harvest was larger in apiaries at higher altitudes. The bees there benefited from the later flowering, which, unlike at lower altitudes, was not rained out.
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