According to beekeepers, if the weather doesn’t warm up within a few days, you shouldn’t expect much acacia honey.
“Usually, the acacia started blooming in May, but due to the mild weather in February and March, it started to open earlier,” he said. István Tóth, Plant Protection Engineer. At dawn on Monday, it was minus 2-3 degrees in the county, this cold can already damage the stamens.
At temperatures below ten degrees, bees have limited movement, they cannot collect nectar en masse from acacia flowers
– highlighted the plant protection engineer.
“The acacia has never bloomed so early,” he said Robert Hanzel, who, together with his fellow beekeepers, is not happy about the flowering in mid-April. “In this cold weather, the bees only go out for water and the acacia does not give nectar, unfortunately by the time the weather is good again, the flowers will have already ripened,” said Róbert Hanzel, who has been beekeeping in Kaposmörö for 12 years. He currently has a hundred bee colonies. There is little hope for improvement. According to him, there will not be much acacia honey this year, even though this variety is still the most sought after among customers. He also noted that this year in Somogy, the area sown for rape was halved and the collection did not go well everywhere, which is why there are beekeepers who are still forced to feed their bees.
“The weather is a disaster, it was 4 degrees in the morning, but below 10 degrees the bees don’t even come out of the hive,” he said desperately János Mészáros, president of the Zselici Bee Association. According to him, it should be 20-25 degrees around April 20. “We hope that the weather will improve from Thursday, and that the bees will be able to gather from the clusters that are not yet in full bloom,” noted János Mészáros. The specialist believes that if there were 3-4 days of good weather, then a medium aka load could be realized, but a peak year cannot be expected. “I don’t remember a year like this, unfortunately the flowering started almost a whole month earlier in the winter heat,” said the Kaposvár beekeeper.
