Richard Bray’s hives stand in a crooked line at the edge of the apple orchard, beside a low thicket of nettles. Richard was “brought up with” beekeeping here at Haywood farm, and at the peak of his apiary business had 250 hives; today he has seven. This spring, for the first time in 75 years, none of his bees survived the winter.
Richard lifts the lid of the first hive, releasing a sour smell of old wax and honey. “There’s nothing,” he says, “that’s very worrying. You’d expect to [at least] see dead bees in there. But there isn’t a bee anywhere.” An inspector from the National Bee Unit advised that the loss was caused by the varroa mite, a notorious destroyer of bee colonies. “I’ve never had anything like this,” Richard tells me. “Varroa mite? I don’t know.”
Ian Campbell of the British Beekeepers’ Association says that Richard is not alone. The Association was “significantly surprised” to hear some accounts of catastrophic losses across the country. The full extent of the losses is not yet known, as annual survey data won’t be available until July. A wet January and February has been blamed by many beekeepers, but Campbell says that this alone doesn’t necessarily explain the losses. “A colony might survive one thing,” he says, “but throw in a second, and they reach a tipping point.”
Other possible causes include pathogens, and last year’s abnormally long bee season – with an early spring and late autumn. This may have given the varroa mite longer to become established, or put bees’ peak population out of sync with flowers.
Richard thuds the lid down on his empty hive. He’ll try to get hold of more bees, but that’s not easy at this stage of the season. I ask what he enjoys about keeping bees, and his face lights up. “They’re marvellous little insects. How organised they all are. They all have their own duties. And the hives are all different: some are vicious, others I can do without a bee suit and not get a sting.” He stopped wearing gloves as he found that without them “you go slower. You go more gentle.”
We head back through the orchard for a glass of apple juice, made from the fruit of last year’s crop.
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