Some Considerations about Winter Colony Losses in Italy According to the Coloss Questionnaire

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The Italian beekeeping industry has grown steadily during the last decade, according to data from the national beekeeping registry. Nevertheless, winter colony losses remain a matter of concern for beekeepers in Italy, and administration of the questionnaire defined by the Coloss Association could contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon. Since 2008, data on winter colony losses have been gathered through the Coloss questionnaire at European Union, European, and extra-European levels. In Italy, these data have been collected since 2008 in hard-copy form and online since 2019–2020. However, since the responding beekeepers did not represent all Italian regions over the years, the whole questionnaire administration period (2008–2021) could not be reasonably considered for analysis. Hence, we included only the periods 2014–2015 and 2020–2021. Among the possible causes of colony losses were queen-related problems, natural disasters, and dead or empty colonies, since these questions remained unchanged over time. We also took account of responses related to treatments against Varroa mite infestation. ABSTRACT: The Italian beekeeping industry has grown steadily during the last decade, according to data from the national beekeeping registry, which came into existence in February 2015. Winter colony losses remain a matter of concern for beekeepers in Italy, and administration of the questionnaire defined by the Coloss Association could contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon. To evaluate the percentage trends over time in honeybee colony losses arising from various causes, we used the quasi-binomial generalized linear modelling (GzLM) approach, taking the year as an independent variable. We set our level of significance at 5% and performed the data analysis only for the seven regions that sent data continuously from 2014 to 2020. We considered the percentage of losses due to queen-related problems, natural disasters, and dead or empty colonies, given that these questions remained unchanged over the years. The survey also revealed that the percentage trend for respondents using drone brood removal showed a significant increase. In general, the percentage of colony losses due to queen-related problems remained lower than 8%, and the percentage of colony losses associated with natural disasters was very low (<2%). The mean percentages of losses due to dead or empty colonies ranged from 6 to 17% in the considered period. In addition, we took account of the responses relating to treatments against Varroa mite infestation, given the importance attributed to this honeybee parasite. Unlike the other variables, we calculated the percentages related to the types of beekeeper treatments against Varroa destructor based on the respondents, not on the colonies. What emerged was that almost every beekeeper used at least one type of treatment against V. destructor. In general, the trend of respondents appeared stable at 0.3% during the last four years.