In principle, we probably all know the importance of honey bees. But the numbers are always impressive nonetheless:
- 80% of our total domestic flowering plants are pollinated by honey bees.
- Without the contribution of bees would reduce the yield in orchards, for example by 75%. Bees pollinate including stone and pome fruit trees, berry bushes, rape, peas, beans, clover, alfalfa, cabbage, carrots and all kinds of flowering plants.
- Therefore, measure the value of bees to their honey not only performance, but on their pollination and thus their contribution to biodiversity conservation.
- To collect the nectar for 1 pound of honey, place the honey bees back a distance equal to three times the circumference of the earth.
- German bees (identified at present in the black-red-gold probe savers) to cover their work with about 20-25% of German honey demand.
- Every German eats an average of 1.3 kilograms of honey per year
More than 80,000 beekeepers are still in Germany, but they have, and that is worrisome, with an average age of 65. There is a lack of young beekeepers and the inside.
1952, there were only 182 000 beekeepers in Western Germany with 2.1 million bee colonies.
In 1972 there were 87 100 beekeepers with more than one million people.
The last census of the German Beekeepers' Association, based in Wachtberg near Bonn in 2009 revealed a number of 81 500 members with about 614 000 people.
A worrying trend in total! (more ...)
