Valuing over-winter colony losses for New Zealand’s commercial beekeepers

Philip Stahlmann-Brown, Richard J. Hall, Rex Butt, Brian McCall, Gabriel Torres and Tony Wright

New Zealand Economic Papers, 2023, vol. 57, issue 2, 184-190

Abstract: The number of managed honeybee colonies in New Zealand has increased dramatically, due largely to increasing high-value mānuka honey exports. Pollination also represents an important part of the apicultural sector, providing critical services to the horticultural and arable crop industries. A survey of winter colony losses has been conducted annually since 2015. Using data from the 2021 wave of the survey, we derive a model to estimate the financial cost of winter colony loss to New Zealand commercial beekeepers in that year. We estimate that winter colony losses conservatively cost commercial beekeepers $24,181,835 in 2021, which amounts to $38.04 per managed colony. This equates to 9.2% of the value of honey yields for commercial beekeepers who produce honey and between 10.6% and 60.5% of the value of contracts for beekeepers who provide pollination services. These substantial costs pose a risk to the profitability of beekeeping.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00779954.2022.2146527 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:nzecpp:v:57:y:2023:i:2:p:184-190

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RNZP20

DOI: 10.1080/00779954.2022.2146527

Access Statistics for this article

New Zealand Economic Papers is currently edited by Dennis Wesselbaum

More articles in New Zealand Economic Papers from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().