Transcript Beekeeping in Greece - The Greens | European Free Alliance

Beekeeping in Greece: problems
and proposals
Vasilis Ntouras, President
Federation of Greek Beekeepers Associations
OMSE
My job and my co-workers in the field
In OMSE’s office
With
and
Greek beekeeping in numbers
• 1.500.000 bee colonies
• 17.000 beekeepers
• 6000 professionals (>150
colonies)
• ~20.000 tons of
honey/year
• ~15 kgr/colony /year
• 12 colonies/km2
• 4 transportations per
year on average
• Honey production cost
is high
• Honey yield per colony
and year is low
• Yet, the quality of Greek
Honey is unique
Beekeeping in Greece has certain very
specific characteristics
• Mountainous land
• Hot-dry climate
• Farming area is ~ 28% of
the land
• GMO free
• High biodiversity
~6500 plant taxa
• Colonies have to be
moved a lot
(transhumance)
• Low production per hive
15 kgr of honey/colony/year
Greece-usually!- has a very small percentage of
bee losses (~10%)
Three reasons:
Small fraction of bee foraging in crops/foraging in
natural ecosystems (small exposure to pesticides)
Rich biodiversity and a long productive period
(winters are short)
The Greek beekeeper’s mentality: lost colonies
must be replaced ASAP
Causes of bee losses in Greece
• Climate change – extreme weather phenomena
become frequent (scorchers, drought, floods, strong winds)
• Loss of bee foraging habitat
(forest fires, over-grazing, tourism,urbanization)
• Pesticides and particularly neonicotinoids
Bees that fed on crops where neonicotinoids were used,
exhibit some 35-50% losses
in the following 8-month period.
Colony defense collapses and it becomes vulnerable to
several pathogens, the way an AIDS patient is…
Cotton honey:
a great paradigm
• Before neonicotinoids, which are systemic, sprayings in cotton killed
a lot of forager bees
• Still the outcome was a positive one as the colony managed to gather
about 30 kgr of honey and replace the foragers lost
• Nowadays, after the massive losses the beekeepers have suffered
from 2005 and on, the 3000 tons of cotton honey are history…
• By the way, cotton honey is a very tasty flower honey with great
antibacterial and antioxidant properties!
In 2011 and 2012 more than 10.000 colonies died
off in Attica and some islands, because of
sprayings on palm trees with neonicotinoid
insecticides approved for red beatle control
The beekeeper replaces the bee
colonies he has lost
Bee colony loss is translated into livestock loss
and honey production loss and consequently
income loss for the beekeeper.
How long can beekeepers stay in business making up for
the damage on their own ?
What is OMSE doing ?
How can we achieve
a pollinator friendly
agricultural model?
Political pressure through wide
political and social alliances
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•
Greek Mps και MEPs
Greenpeace
Scientists –Scientific organisations
Consumer organisations
Farmers unions –Organic Farmers
unions
• NGOs
• Internet Campaigning
Communities (avaaz, change etc)
 Coordination with Europe’s
beekeepers (EPBA, CoEur)
Action for co-existence
In 2012-2013 we organised 3 events in 3 cities
(Chania, Nafplion and Arta) to bring beekeepers
and orange growers together
What the Greek beekeepers ask:
Legal support in EU level for
• Protection from pesticides
• Protection from GMOs
• Clear distinctions between locally produced
beekeeping products from imported ones
posing as local
We propose:
The 'bee-friendly' label should be included in the EU
legislation on agricultural product quality as a
quality term
We propose:
Direct aid to beekeepers from the 2nd
pillar of the CAP for their
contribution to food production, to
the environment and biodiversity
In countries like Greece where
bees provide pollination, for the
most part, to non-cultivated plants
and beekeepers pay additional costs
for moving the bees (transhumance)
we request from the Community
to include in the new CAP a
“pollination subsidy”
We propose:
The 3 –year apiculture programmes
(Regulation EC 1234/07) should run on
a 7- year basis in harmony with the CAP
Our thanks
To the Green MEP’s for all their efforts to
support the bees and European
beekeeping!
Thank you
for listening!