The 2022 honey harvest will oscillate between 12,000 and 14,000 tonnes, below the expectations of beekeepers, the flowers and bees having suffered from the lack of water and the high summer heat (AFP/Archives/Fred TANNEAU)
The 2022 honey harvest will oscillate between 12,000 and 14,000 tonnes, below the expectations of beekeepers, the flowers and bees having suffered from the lack of water and the high heat of summer, deplored the National Union of Beekeeping on Monday. French (Unaf).
The episode of historic drought has dried up lavender, fir trees and chestnut trees: “Never have the harvests been so heterogeneous”, with production areas “more than mediocre” and others where beekeepers “have achieved beautiful honey flows” , underlines the organization in a press release.
She hoped to turn the corner after a disastrous year 2021, “the worst in French beekeeping”, when the harvest had fallen between 7,000 and 9,000 tonnes of honey.
Climate change, the effects of which have been “felt by beekeepers for a good fifteen years”, leads to increasingly early flowering, which ends in July when it previously spread over the whole the summer.
Their quality determines the flavor and the quantity of honey produced and also impacts the health of the bees. Beyond a certain temperature, the flowers are no longer able to produce the nectar, on which these foraging insects feed.
Hives in Muzig, in the Bas-Rhin, October 25, 2021 (AFP/Archives/Frederick FLORIN)
After a relatively mild winter, the early harvests of rosemary or even thyme “were more than mediocre” and that of lavender was “very disappointing”, according to Unaf.
In the Landes, forest fires have seriously damaged buckthorn and heather, completely preventing honey flow.
Harvests are also increasingly uncertain: for acacia, they “were either excellent” in Burgundy or Ile-de-France, or wiped out by late frosts in the Southwest.
In the mountains, where the vegetation has not been spared, the honey flows are “generally bad”. They are also “too often weak” in the eastern forests, where fir trees grow.
In areas where there is alfalfa or sainfoin, “which resist the rigors of the climate well”, beekeepers have achieved better harvests. The flowering of rapeseed and spring flowers also saves the day this year.
Another consequence of the drought: the bees have not been able to transform enough nectar into honey and thus build up reserves from which to draw in the winter. What weaken their ability to spend this tough season in good conditions, warns Unaf.
© 2022 AFP
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