About new beekeepers, reasons for taking up beekeeping, and waiting for a first colony of bees: results from the SBA/COLOSS survey 2018

摘要

Alison Gray and Magnus PetersonDepartment of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathdyde, GlasgowIntroductionThe SBA/COLOSS survey has run in Scotland since 2006, as an initiative of the Scottish Beekeepers Association. It was run in 2006 and 2008 as a general survey about beekeeping in Scotland, and since 2010 it has run annually as part of the COLOSS (www.coloss.org) colony loss monitoring surveys, to focus primarily on colony losses over winter and management practices. However at national level we also include other questions of local interest. We always ask a few questions for non-beekeepers, but in 2018we asked for the first time a few questions for new beekeepers concerning their own experience, even if they were not yet able to answer questions about over-winter losses or varroa management, for example. We felt that the answers to these questions would be of interest both to the SBA trustees and SBA members. Some results from the answers in the 2018 survey of both these groups of respondents are reported here.