APIS Volume 7, Number 8, August 1989
In this issue
- More Observations on Italian Beekeeping
MORE OBSERVATIONS ON ITALIAN BEEKEEPING
Since my last newsletter, I have had time to travel to several places and make more observations on Italian beekeeping. Of special interest have been visits to Naples, Perugia, Turin and Rome. The latter serves as headquarters for The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the world beekeeping association known as Apimondia and the Italian Beekeeping Federation, Federazione Apicoltori Italiani (FAI).
The President or Executive Director of the FAI, Dr. Silvestro Cannamela, kindly agreed to meet me at his Rome office. According to Dr. Cannamela, the FAI's members are local beekeeping groups or consortiums made up of individual beekeepers. Some 55 consortiums belong and more are being asked to join as time goes on. Several other beekeeping groups also exist in the country including a professional association and Conapi, a marketing consortium of several cooperatives.
Dr. Canamelo described the FAI as an organization dedicated to helping beekeepers. It does this in a number of ways. First, a bimonthly magazine is published called "Apitalia." This contains advertisements for beekeeping related items as well as articles on beekeeping techniques. The May issue contains some interesting facts on the FAI. It completed 36 years of service in that month and had a membership of 50,000 beekeepers. Only a few thousand in the United States are members of national associations.
The FAI keeps its membership not only by publishing a journal, but also by providing several other services. Beekeepers can receive liability insurance through the organization. In addition, the FAI provides its members with a special seal of quality that can be affixed to their products, as well as a multi-colored carboard package which has the seal and guarantee of quality on it. Further services include a discount card (Apicard) which can be used at various commercial establishments, twenty-four hour telephone answering service for questions and the provision of certain substances beekeepers might need in emergencies. The FAI is distributing to its members APISTAN plastic strips now that the material has been approved for Italy.
The organization also sells some forty publications of interest to beekeepers. These include books on honey and other bee products, beekeeping practices, history of beekeeping, and instrumental insemination. Finally, the FAI represents beekeepers and promotes their interests by attending legislative sessions. Dr. Cannamela recently went before the Italian general assembly to discuss beekeepers problems from marketing to pesticide poisoning.
An interesting counterpoint to our discussion was the question put to me. "Why is one of the richest countries in the world not a member of Apimondia?" The U.S. has let its membership lapse. I was caught off-guard by his observation, and was particularly uneasy because I had just handed him my paper which I plan to present at the next Apimondia meeting in October. He said that no paper by a resident of the U.S. is being rejected for the Brazilian congress because the U.S. is not a dues-paying member.
Dr. Canamella told me he believes this decision by the U.S. is a big mistake. Most European countries are members and support Apimondia. The once every other year meeting has often been held in Europe. It last met in the U.S. in 1967. I presume those who run our national beekeeping associations have let membership lapse for various reasons.
This points to fundamental differences that exist between the Europe and the U.S. Although the FAI in Italy is responsible for paying the annual dues to Apimondia, it not all that clear to me who pays in other countries. Presumably the government in many socialist countries picks up the tab. As I pointed out to Dr. Cannamela, we have a number of Associations which represent various beekeeper interests in the U.S..
Other organizations also exist to help beekeepers and several other journals are published. These include: Le Nostre Api, published by the Provincial Bee Association of Trento; L'Apicolture Moderno, published by the Apicultural Observatory at the University of Turin; L'Ape Nosta Amica, published by the Provincial Bee Association of Milano; and Notiziario dell'Apicoltore, published by the Ravenna Bee Association.
Beyond private associations, beekeepers are also aided by state supported institutions. In the last issue of this newsletter, I briefly mentioned the programs of the Italian National Apicultural Institute which involve honey quality and improving the Italian race of honey bee (Apis mellifera ligustica) for which the country is justly proud. Equivalent to our university experiment station, the state supported Istituto Sperimentale per la Zoologia Agraria is also involved in research to help the beekeeper. It also has some regulatory functions. The Istituto, headquartered in Florence, publishes, Apicoltura," a scientific magazine dedicated to bee research. A recent issue analyzes Italian honey in depth and presents an article on identification of Varroa complete with pictures of all developmental stages of the pest.
Departments of entomology around Italy also participate in beekeeping teaching and research. I visited Dr. Pasquale Mazzone of the Faculty of Entomology at the University of Naples in Portici. Dr. Mazzone like several instructors in beekeeping also teaches silkworm culture. Italy, after China, is a prime producer of silk. Dr. Mazzone is concerned about use of pesticides by beekeepers to control Varroa. In southern Italy, beekeepers are less organized it seems. They are much more individualistic and use a wide variety of legal and illegal substances to control Varroa. Dr. Mazzone believes that resistance to both amitraz and fluvalinate has begun in southern Italy where brood is present all year around and pesticide treatments are more numerous. He asserted that mechanical control of the pest is economically possible through routine manipulation of drone brood.
I was also a recent guest of the Department of Entomology and Apiculture at the University of Turin. This is a very different environment than found in southern Italy. It is near the French border and has closer ties to the rest of Europe than other parts of Italy. The faculty there is also concerned about use of pesticides to control Varroa. They are very active in research and are presently studying the possibility of using drone brood as a sink to control Varroa. A frame divided vertically into thirds is placed in the center of the brood nest. The bees build drone comb on it. A third of the frame is removed every 8 days with capped drone brood. With the brood goes a good number of mites. The drone brood thus becomes a magnet attracting Varroa which prefers drones because of their longer development time. Preliminary results are encouraging, resulting in a reduction in overall infestation. This technique was pioneered by a beekeeper in the area and shows that cooperation between beekeepers and scientists is close in northern Italy.
Other research in Turin consists of toxicity tests on bees for a wide variety of pesticides. Substances are tested for their toxicity by both both contact and ingestion. Unfortunately, the testing procedure is different than that practiced in the U.S. and elsewhere in Europe. This makes the results incompatible. This is recognized by those at Turin, however, they are in no position to change the protocol. Their technique was published on the occasion of the meeting of a working group on methods for toxicity testing, International Agricultural Center, Wageningen, Netherlands.
Effects of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union has also been studied at the University of Turin. Discussions of the subject in Turin revealed that after a significant rise in radiation levels in plants and animals (milk was particularly suspect), they proceeded to decline. However, the amount of radiation in plants has not yet returned to where it was before the accident. Thus, the levels in vegetation continue to be some 100 times greater than before the accident, although these are not considered to be harmful to the vegetation or animals consuming plants in the area.
Those in Turin are extremely proud of their culture and its association with beekeeping. This region hosted the fifth International Beekeeping Congress in 1911, the eighth in 1928 and in 1970, celebrated the sixtieth year of the publication of L'Apicoltore Moderno. A concrete example of this sense of history culminated in the third monograph in a series celebrating the agriculture of the region by the Piedmont Agricultural Museum Association. The resulting publication "III Past and Present Subalpine Beekeeping," contains 242 pages. This publication was a coup for the Department of Entomology for apiculture when it is realized that the first two monographs in the series dealt with viticulture and mechanized agriculture.
The Department of Entomology and Apiculture at the University of Turin also publishes one of Italy's premier bee journals, L'Apicoltore Moderno. This was inherited by the University after the death of the last editor in the early 1970s. The editor, Signorina Cav. Maria Grada Angeleri, not only left the publication to the University, but also through the efforts of his relatives his house has been placed at the Department's disposal. Currently, this "apicultural observatory," as it is fondly called in Turin, is used for research and beekeeping classes. A visit to the observatory is a fascinating trip. The basement holds an adhoc museum of different hives, including a small wooden box developed in Brazil for the culture of the South American stingless bee. I sensed a beekeeping aura while standing near the building with its neat rows of colonies. The day I was there the bees were eagerly sucking juices from a lovely lavender plant. Shading the colonies was a thick vine of kiwi fruit, the product of the bees' efforts some months before.
Another Department of Entomology can be found in the picturesque Umbrian hilltown called Perugia. The department focuses on nectar-producing plants and pollen analysis. Dr. Ricciardelli D'Albore along with Dr. Livia Persano have published a classic volume on the subject, "Flora Apistica Italiana," replete with color pictures of each plant as well as photographs taken through a microscope of the pollen. The head of the Department, Dr. Marcella Battaglini, provided me with a recent thesis which characterizes many facets of Italian beekeeping. It was written by Claudioi Legnini and contains the latest information gathered from 33 beekeeping consortia and well over two hundred beekeepers, the majority of which (143) moved bees during the year.
In his introduction, Mr. Legnini characterizes Italian beekeeping within the European context. According to the Working Group on Beekeeping of the Organization of Professional Agriculturalists of the European Economic Commission, in 1980 some 4,700,000 colonies existed in Europe managed by 378,000 beekeepers. The countries with the most beekeepers were France, Germany, Greece and Italy, respectively, and the average beekeeper managed 10 to 12 hives. With introduction of Varroa , beekeeping activity has declined from 40% to as much as 80% in southern Europe.
Italian beekeeping, Mr. Legnini reports, according to the Federazione Apicoltori Italiani (FAI), is made up of 85,000 beekeepers of which 1% are full-time commercial, 25% are part-time sideliners and 74% are amateurs. The number of colonies in Italy fluctuates between 800,000 and 900,000, of which 90% are in modern movable-frame hives. Honey production is calculated at 85,000 quintales (18,700,000 lbs) and wax at 6,000 quintales (1,320,000 lbs). The value of Italian apicultural production is about 175 million dollars (25 thousand million lira), but when indirect value is added, the amount becomes 17.5 million dollars (2500 thousand million lira).
Mr. Legnini's thesis is that because the melliferous flora has changed greatly in the last 30 years, movement of bees has become a practical alternative for many apiculturists. Movement in fact is necessary in many areas which now rely heavily on herbicide and pesticide use. On the positive side, moving bees is responsible for greater honey production and an increase in quality.
It also allows the beekeeper to diversify and take advantage of the succession of blooming plants in different areas. However, Mr. Legnini points out that movement has some negative points too. These include more costs associated with equipment necessary to move and fuel expenses. Moving also may result in loss of queens as well as the spread of bee diseases and pests. The final part of his thesis explains in some detail the apicultural situation in many of the distinct regions or provinces found in Italy.
Malcolm T. Sanford
Bldg 970, Box 110620
University of Florida
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Phone (904) 392-1801, Ext. 143 FAX: 904-392-0190
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©1989 M.T. Sanford "All Rights Reserved
