>But how accurate is the 'data'? We 'know' for example that less than half the colonies in the UK are registered with the National Bee Unit (registration is voluntary), so did the 'data' include an estimate for those?
I was curious about this, so I did a little digging.
The FAO data itself that the research employed is prepared via a standard questionnaire sent to each country's agricultural department on an annual basis. So it is only as good as the self-reporting completed by each participating country (Table S2 - attached).
In the case of the UK, it appears that these data are prepared by DEFRA - and here was some of the latest published figures I could find online. I expect someone more tech savvy could find more recent data:
Bees and other pollinators: their value and health in England (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c620ae5274a7ee2567180/pb13981-bees-pollinators-review.pdf)
'As there is currently no compulsory requirement for beekeepers to register their interests, numbers of the bees in the UK can only be estimated and published numbers of beekeepers range from 40-46,000 keeping between 210-275,000 colonies. In population terms, there are around 5 billion honey bees in winter (20,000 per colony), rising to some 16 billion in the summer (60,000 per colony).'
Supporting document to the National Pollinator Strategy: for bees and other pollinators in England (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5cae13ede5274a69c1c82003/20141103-supporting-doc-final.pdf)
'In 2013, over 29,000 beekeepers managing around 126,000 colonies, were registered in England on the National Bee Unit’s BeeBase database, compared with 15,000 beekeepers managing just under 80,000 colonies in 2008.'
Specific to FAO, it appears that the UK has not reported in on managed honey bee colonies since 1987 - so the research has an estimate of 191,000 utilized in the analysis.
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