Honey bee colony losses in Brazil in 2018-2019 (original) (raw)

Brazilian Journal of Animal and Environmental Research

A research was conducted to assess honey bee colony losses in Brazil, including their likely causes. Beekeepers responded to two complete annual questionnaires (n=268 in 2018 and n=254 in 2019). There was a total of 175,003 hives of Africanized honey bees (Apis mellifera Linnaeus), (µ=335 hives per beekeeper, min=9 and Max=3,600), of which 27.2% were lost. A Generalized Linear Model (GLM) for total loss (TL) and a Wald method for average loss (AL) were used to estimate 95% confidence intervals (CI) for loss rates based on year: 2018, TL=30.5%, CI (28.5-32.4), AL=39.5, CI (37.0-41.9); and 2019, TL=23.8%, CI (22.5-25.2), AL=31.3%, CI (29.5-33.1). Pesticides were speculated to be the leading cause of colony losses (47.3%), followed by climate (drought, flood, rain: 11.6%), malnutrition (lack of flowering, lack of energy and/or protein source, wrong nutrition: 9.7%), absconding (10.2%), mismanagement (wrong migratory activity, migration to mangrove, beekeeper’s personal problems: 7.9%),...