Cia alarm for beekeeping brought to its knees by the cold and the lack of flowering
Novara – Cia Novara Vercelli VCO raises the alarm for the beekeeping sector, whose harvest is almost entirely compromised, due to the cold temperatures and the continuation of the rain, which have invalidated the spring blooms. Beekeepers must intervene to support the bees, thus adding significant activity costs that impact an already compromised framework marked by the loss of income for the current season. Production is down by 90%: beekeepers will not receive compensation for their activity and consumers will not have the product.
Cia member, a beekeeper in Vogogna, explains the situation, Fabio Tombesi, owner of Apicoltura Ca dul Pin: «In a normal year the season would have ended at this moment and I would have started doing the treatments in the laboratory, but instead I haven’t produced anything and I don’t even know if it will happen in the next few weeks. A few months ago I imagined we weren’t going to have a great season, but this one is devastating: there are no blooms, it’s cold and the bees are hungry. In the absence of nectar we intervened with nutritional substitutes, but the bees are small, emaciated and in pain. We lost the first flowering of spring acacia and wildflowers and the second flowering also went to zero. Furthermore, I couldn’t do nomadism: it’s impossible to take the bees to the high mountains in this weather situation, I would risk losing them; therefore even our prized mountain wildflower, which is protected by Slow Food, will not be there. I try to leave the supers to try for a little recovery, but since they are late the flowering will be very short, because it is out of time. There will be half supers with an average production of one or two kg per box, while normally the production is around 25 kg per hive. In the last nine years we have noticed the impact of climate change, but if part of the production was missing, up to 40%, we were saved with the second flowering, which did not happen this year. The future of beekeeping is uncertain, I don’t know in what conditions my bees will be able to survive next winter.”
Beekeepers hope for the Region’s intervention so that it can help support beekeeping companies at least for the extra costs incurred for bee nutrition.
