Bees
(asked on 28th June 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what information her Department holds on the change in the size of the honey bee population between 2017 and 2022.
Our annual Hive Count exercise indicates that numbers of managed honey bees have increased in recent years, from around 252,000 UK colonies in 2017 to 288,000 in 2022. Annual figures are provided in the table below.
Year | Estimated number of hives |
2017 | 252,000 |
2018 | 244,000 |
2019 | 264,000 |
2020 | 260,000 |
2021 | 272,631 |
2022 | 288,311 |
To a large extent, numbers of honey bees are dependent on the number of people willing to keep bees.