Honey bee colony losses in Latin America over the last seven years.

REQUIER, F; ANTÚNEZ K.; ALDEA SÁNCHEZ, P; GARRIDO P, M.; GIACOBINO, A; MORALES, C; REYNALDI, FJ; COLONY LOSSES WORKING GROUP

Conferencia; 13th COLOSS Conference; 2017

Over the past decade, several countries have carriedout monitoring of managed honey bee colonies suggesting high losses all overthe world. Although Latin America plays a major role in the global honeysupply, estimates of honey bee colony losses are lacking. Using the FAO datasetwe reveal a worrying situation for apiculture in Latin America, where therespective contribution to both global beehive numbers and honey exports aredeclining. Moreover, we present a synthesis of unpublished data of colonylosses over the last seven years, showing estimates of high loss rates invarious Latin-American countries. However, these estimates are based on verylow sample sizes, and there is high variability in methods across initiativespreventing proper comparisons. These results suggest the need to adapt,centralize and standardize methods across countries in Latin America, a mainobjective of the ?colony losses? working group at the Latin-American BeeResearch Association, SOLATINA, a large-scale platform created in 2016 tocoordinate bee research programs in Latin America.