I have obtained a copy of

DEPARTMENT FOR ENVIRONMENT, FOOD and RURAL AFFAIRS
Health of livestock and honeybees in England
REPORT BY THE COMPTROLLER AND AUDITOR GENERAL
HC 288 Session 2008-2009 | 4 March 2009



As I suspected the newspapers have garbled the general message.

Several key points from the report


> Before adopting mandatory measures such as compulsory registration, the National Bee Unit should build on beekeepers’ receptiveness to bee inspectors’ advice

> Assess what incentives could be offered to encourage more beekeepers to register, such as better training and advice from experienced bee inspectors.

> The National Bee Unit carries out its own research projects and engages with the wider research community, but it has not given sufficient emphasis to sharing the findings of its research more widely.

> The Department should balance the need for applied research that can offer practical benefits for the bee health programme with the need for strategic research to understand new and emerging risks to honeybee health.




On the one hand, they do try to blame beekeepers for the fact that
varroa is not under control in England. At the same time, however,
they offer no particular remedy for eradicating varroa (as there is
none).

They state plainly:

> Attempts to control the spread of Varroa in honeybees have not prevented it from becoming endemic in England. Growing resistance of Varroa mites to chemical treatment, making Varroa more difficult to control, is likely to have contributed to the increase in losses experienced since 2001, compounded by poor summer weather and other factors. Oxalic acid, for example, is in widespread use in many EU Member States but is not licensed for use in the United Kingdom.

! None of this is the fault of the "20,000 beekeepers who are not
known to its bee inspectors". Furthermore they state that "Varroa
ceased to be a notifiable disease in 2006", which means that the
inspectors don't have any mandate to eradicate varroa. Yet somehow
backyard beekeepers are to be chastised for putting our very food on
the table at risk!

The public has hated and feared bees for millennia, the government and
the researchers have ignored beekeepers for years, but now they are
joining together in condemning the beekeeping community for its
problems. As if it is our fault that all these plagues have been
visited upon us, and being slackers, we simply can't get with the
program to rid ourselves of them.

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