2023-05-30 06:51:06
Austrian beekeepers had to feed their honey bees during peak bloom because the insects could not fly due to the wet cold weather.
Vienna (OTS) – Wolfgang Pointecker is chairman of Biene Austria, the umbrella organization for professional and recreational beekeepers, and president of the Austrian professional beekeepers’ association. After a broadcast, the beekeeping professional draws a first interim balance of the honey year. “This year there is almost no blossom honey. For most beekeepers, the first of two spin dates is omitted.
“Spinning is the method of extracting the honey from the honeycombs, in order to then sieve it and fill it into jars in its original form.
Cold wet spring
The time for the first honey harvest is usually at the end of May, after the rapeseed and fruit trees have blossomed. However, the honey bees were unable to do the preparatory work for this. Because the unusual weather messed up their working conditions this year. While the main nectar suppliers were in bloom, April was one of the ten wettest and cloudiest months on record (source: ZAMG), and May started no better.
Because honey bees can only fly above 12°C and only when the weather is dry, they were unable to visit fully blossoming fruit trees such as apricots, apples or pears and spring flowers such as rapeseed or dandelion. Wolfgang Pointecker expects a crop failure of 80 percent on his farm alone. “When it finally got warm, everything had faded.
While the nectar buffet is usually the most plentiful for insects, many beekeepers now had to help out their colonies with food to keep their colonies from starving.
Hope for late bloomers and forest honey
In eastern Austria, Lower Austria and Burgenland there is hope for typical late bloomers such as sunflowers and acacia. But many acacia trees have suffered from heat damage over the past two years, plus the frost in April of this year.
After dramatic failures with blossom honey, Pointecker hopes for forest honey. “The honey bees take the honeydew that other insects produce on spruce, oak or fir trees and bring it to the hive, where it is processed by the hive bees.
Forest honey is darker in colour, tastes incomparably spicy and is considered particularly valuable by honey connoisseurs.
Austrian beekeeping
Around 33,000 professional and leisure beekeepers fill around 4,000 tons of honey per year in Austria. Because consumers consume more, as much is imported again, a large part of it of proven lower quality from “EU and non-EU countries”. Reinhard Hetzenauer is deputy chairman of Biene Austria and warns against demonstrably adulterated cheap goods. “Real honey is the result of the work of our bees and Austrian beekeepers. Such a natural product cannot be replaced by industrial flavored sugar syrup.
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If you want unadulterated honey, you should pay attention to the label. Ideally, it is not a bottling plant that is mentioned there, but the name and location of the Austrian apiary. Or even better: buy directly from a beekeeper nearby.
Current videos and photos for download on the “Current” page of www.erwerbsimkerbund.at
Photos: Organic beekeeper Josef Stich at the beehives of the beekeeping bienen-stich.at
Video raw material: Master beekeeper Josef Stich with OTs on the crop failure and at work on the beehives at the beekeeping bienen-stich.at in the Vienna Quarter/Lower Austria with his son Harald Stich.
photos and videos (free for use in connection with the current press release): Biene Austria/Alek Kawka
Questions & contact:
Wolfgang Pointecker, Chairman Biene Austria and President of the Austrian commercial beekeepers.
Tel.: +43 664 1215 223 E-Mail: president@erwerbsimker.at
Ing. Reinhard Hetzenauer, President of the Austrian Beekeepers Association.
Phone: +43 664 7349 1222 Email: reinhard.hetzenauer@aon.at
1685429744
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