British honey shortages have been predicted this year by bee keepers after the wet summer weather has forced them to feed their colonies with emergency supplies of sugar and syrup.
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The wet UK summer weather has left honey bees confined to their hives

Prolonged periods of rain since April has meant honey bees across the country have been unable to forage during the peak flowering season when they normally gather plentiful supplies of nectar to feed their broods of larvae and produce honey.

Bee keepers are now bracing themselves for some heavy losses in their bee colonies unless they can benefit from a change in the weather.

The National Bee Unit at the government's Food and Environmental Research Agency has issued a starvation alert warning that bees are at risk of starving to death due to the poor weather conditions.

Officials at the British Bee Keepers Association have also warned that honey crops this year are expected to be particularly poor.

Tim Lovett, the association's director of public affairs, said many key crops such as oil seed rape and fruit trees had flowered during the wettest periods, meaning bees were unable to gather nectar.

He said: "Bees can tolerate the cold quite well as they can cluster together to keep warm and the queen stops laying eggs so there are not so many mouths to feed.

"In wet weather, however, they do not forage and flowers tend not to produce much nectar when it is cold. We can expect a very poor honey output this year."

He added that many colonies were swarming on the few days when conditions were dry, leaving hives abandoned.

"We are seeing hives being left with no queens, which is potentially a greater problem in the long term," he said.

It comes after bee keepers in the UK suffered reported bee losses of 16 per cent over the winter - a three per cent rise on the previous year.

Bees are already facing significant losses due to disease, including the varroa mite, and dramatic losses in the number of wild flower meadows in the past couple of decades.

In the UK, honey bee numbers have halved over the past 25 years while numbers of bumblebees have fallen by around 60 per cent since 1970, with three species going extinct.

The unseasonably warm weather in February and April this year meant many colonies began building up their numbers in their hives earlier than normal, only to be left unable to forage for food by the wet weather that has continued since April.

Andy Wattam, the National Bee Inspector, warned bee keepers to feed colonies with sugar and syrup to help prevent colonies from using up crucial food stores over the summer.

He said: "With the continued spell of poor weather in many areas of the UK, reports are coming in from regional and seasonal bee inspectors of starving bee colonies."

Peter Gudgeon, from the Harrogate and Ripon Beekeepers' Association, said it was the first time they have had to take such drastic measures during the summer months.

"I have been keeping bees for 25 years and I have never had to feed my colonies at this time of year before," he said.

"It is something we would normally do in the autumn as we prepare for the winter.

"We really are in uncharted territory this summer."