Like every year, the Syndicat d’apiculture méridionale (SAM) opens its doors to raise public awareness of the cultivation of honey. To the south of Toulouse, in Pouvourville, several beekeepers have come together to offer a taste of the precious nectar from their bees, which is all the more precious this year. The opportunity, therefore, to take stock of this extraordinary season.
Beekeepers are used to dealing with climatic hazards, but it must be said that this year they have accumulated. After the frost in aprilthe nightmare continues for Philippe Garçon, beekeeper in Pompertuzat, south of Toulouse, with abnormally hot temperatures from May, which have “impacted all chestnut blossoms, sunflowers, all spring flowers in fact.”
As a result, the drought has upset the whole chain: “I have the impression that much less nectar has risen in the flowers, for lack of water, believes Philip. Less water, less nectar, less honey, it seems logical.”
Never seen
Half of the honey yield has been lost on average for beekeepers in Haute-Garonne, according to the Syndicat de l’apiculture méridionale (SAM). This lack of nectar, Michel Puisségur, based in Villefranche-de-Lauragais also noted it, his bees were downright famine : “I had to feed the hives. They ate all their provisions, there was no more flowering, because everything was in the state of straw, I’ve never seen that!
Like many, he wants to leave this bad season behind him, but fears that this summer will repeat itself. “Me it leads me to think differently about my work, clearly! That is to say, to turn to more rustic bees, less sensitive to these climatic phenomena.” Like Michel, beekeepers have to adapt, the bee behavior being, like the climate, more and more disordered.