That is not good news for beekeepers Scully - but there are too many of them anyway. The western honey bee is a domesticated insect which is bred between 4 different breeds of bee, with the intention of increasing honey production - it has nothing to do with environmentalism and can only survive with the help of the beekeeper - unfortunately in hives of a size which could never have existed in the wild. There is no such thing as a wild honey bee - comparing them to wild bees is like comparing battery farmed chickens to wild birds. Releasing millions of honey bees (there are upwards of 70,000 in a hive) on a landscape which does not have the nutrition and living space to support its wild bee population is lunacy. It also raises the possibility of diseases escaping from the honey bee population into the native wild bee population. We can say that the Asian hornet is an invasive species, but I am afraid that the honey bee is as well and it is the latter which has a more negative effect on the countryside.
I take your point Cologne but honey bees are useful pollinators and we need as many as we can get, given the demise in bees and other pollinators generally. I must check on the parentage of a honey bee as I thought it was just a European honey bee not a hybrid. Maybe different in Germany? Responsible bee keepers continually monitor for disease (it's in their interests apart from anything else) an report any notifiable diseases to the government. Invasive species, deliberately or accidentally introduced can have a far reaching impact on the the national environment. If an Asian hornet got here under it's own steam fair enough that would be a natural introduction imo but I doubt one would last very long!
https://theconversation.com/keeping-honeybees-doesnt-save-bees-or-the-environment-102931 This just about explains it Scully.
