Discussion
This first nationwide cross-sectional survey focused on how beekeepers perceive and manage risks (climate change, Varroa mite, management practices, and exposure to pesticides). Understanding beekeeper’s perception of risks affecting their colony health and mortality is crucial to better understand beekeepers’ attitudes toward risks and potentially, to adopt new management practices.
Population representativeness was achieved through a snowball sampling strategy compared to the number of voluntarily registered beekeepers on the FASFC database. Representativeness was confirmed by a Chi-squared test and the respondents were the subset of the target population. Nevertheless, the real number of beekeepers in Belgium and per region was difficult to obtain, as most beekeepers are hobbyists and reluctant to register themselves.
Beekeepers’ general attitude towards risk was derived by measuring their degree of risk aversion using four statements on general issues. Beekeepers seemed to have a common understanding of general risk. Nevertheless, for most questions, beekeepers’ perception seemed divergent, as important disparities appeared with std values that were high compared to their respective average values. This might be due to the lack of heterogeneity in beekeeping education and/or in a cultural difference in the perception of risk; Belgium being made up of the three linguistically and culturally different regions.
Climate change is not uniformly perceived as a concern compared to management or Varroa infestation, though it has been pointed out as one of the causes of the colony mortality by scientific research (Dennis and Kemp, 2016; Flores et al., 2019). Overcoming the barriers to mitigate climate change appeared though to be achievable for most beekeepers.
For Varroa perception, the parasite susceptibility was well perceived unlike the severity of the parasite. The benefits of mitigating Varroa risk were positive and the answers were homogenous without being really high. Nevertheless, the barriers to reducing Varroa risk did not seem challenging. When we looked at the detail of the questions dealing with the barriers, beekeepers did not seem to be much affected by the economic impact of colony losses and did not consider the investment in time for Varroa diagnosis as a barrier with divergences in these opinions. To our knowledge,Varroa diagnosis is not a widely used practice among hobby beekeepers, because it is time-consuming (Thoms et al., 2018; Underwood et al., 2019).
Pesticide risk perception differed for beekeepers whether it was for agriculture or apicultural use. To them, the susceptibility of high exposure to veterinary drugs was lower than to agriculture pesticides. Moreover, both scored quite low. The susceptibility of pesticide exposure was expected to be higher. The severity of pesticide exposure (agriculture and apiculture jointly) was perceived as important but not alarming and their benefits were positive. Reducing the use of veterinary drugs and agricultural pesticides were perceived as difficult to reach. The answers to the question dealing with reducing the use of veterinary drugs appeared with large disparities and a high std value. These disparities could be explained by three observed tendencies that seemed to coexist in the Belgian beekeeping community: the first tendency implies the use of drug-based treatments yearly, without monitoring Varroa infestations. The second tendency applies monitoring of Varroa infestations and the use of acids (oxalic) to decrease Varroa pressure on honey bees colonies when required. The third tendency is not to treat infested colonies and to start relying on the selection of Varroa -resistant honeybees. These three distinctive tendencies could explain partly the average score of the susceptibility of veterinary drugs as well as the high std values.
Out of the three previously assessed risks, the respondents seemed to perceive the importance of management practices more uniformly than any of the 3 other risks. This was of utmost importance for the health and survival of honey bee colonies, as management practices were crucial to compensate the effects made worse by the Varroa infestations, changes in climate, and many other interacting stress factors for honey bees. Nevertheless, some questions (e.g. the hive type) kept on being reversed.
Beekeepers felt the most responsible for the quality of the honey they produce and were mostly influenced by their own health and environment protection as well as by the colony mortality. These elements could be considered as a lever for adopting better management practices.
Through the results of this survey, std values fluctuated quite a lot, sometimes exceeding variable average values. The questions with the highest std values, meaning the most controversial ones, were related to the questions regarding varroosis perception, and more specifically the systematic use of chemical treatments (e.g. apistan, apivar) to controlVarroa and avoid colony mortality, the adoption of more selective use of varroacides to delay the development of resistance, as well as the role played by untreated neighbouring colonies on Varroare-infestation in own apiaries. The biggest disparity in answers appeared with the question related to whether the responsibility ofVarroa control lay with the authorities, or at the individual beekeeper’s level. This issue has always been a sensitive subject for Belgian beekeepers as the authorised treatment substances are limited to products which some do not consider effective.
The Welch test was performed to compare the perception of beekeepers with colony mortality lower and higher than 10% assuming that beekeepers with lower mortality rates have better risk management. The empirical threshold of 10% is considered acceptable in Belgium but is open to discussion. Although no reference values exist for the acceptable level of colony losses, various acceptable rates of colony mortality were reported in European countries (Charrière and Neumann, 2010; Genersch et al., 2010) and outside Europe (Steinhauer et al., 2014).
The results indicated that beekeepers with mortality rates lower than 10% had a higher average number of colonies, and were more active in increasing them than the ones with mortality rates higher than 10%. The size of the apiary, the age, and the experience of the beekeeper have already been reported as factors directly linked to the survival of the honey bee colony (Brodschneider et al., 2016; Jacques et al., 2017).
We assumed that these results expressed better capacities in risk management and thus in management practices, and a proactive approach of beekeeping. The scores of the benefits of reducing the risk of colony mortality through better management practices confirmed our assumption. These risks were significantly better perceived by the beekeepers with mortality rates under 10% and had a higher score at all questions related to the actions or intentions of actions. This confirms the hypothesis that greater levels of perceived risk combined with strong perceptions of the benefits of action would lead to increased motivation to act in better ways. Nevertheless, those same beekeepers scored significantly lower in the perception of climate change severity and varroosis severity. We cannot state with certainty if these perceptions were due to the beekeepers’ resilience capacity or to the lack of the perception of impact severity, due to good management practices. No other studies that would allow us to compare our results are currently available.