Data collection
An information letter on the survey, containing a short description of the survey, the duration of the questionnaire and the assurance that responses would be anonymous and confidential was spread in 2 national languages (French and Dutch) through the University of Liège, the University of Gent, and the Beekeeping Research and Information Center (CARI) networks. Due to the absence of a complete sampling frame of beekeepers, the recruitment email directed participants to an online survey and asked respondents to forward the survey invitation and the link to fellow beekeepers. Requests to distribute the survey were also sent to beekeeping unions, and regional beekeeping schools. We used the snowball sampling strategy, so respondents are the subset of the target population who learned about the survey and were willing to participate (Lupo et al., 2016; Thoms et al., 2018). The online survey was open from 22 December 2017 until 06 February 2018. The survey was edited for processing and entered into a database. Filters were developed to exclude from the analysis responses such as questionnaires with incomplete answers, irrational (e.g. age=3 years), or those that were obviously duplicate answers. Only beekeepers older than 18 years, with at least a year of experience and a minimum of 1 hive were considered for the survey.