THIS year's honey harvest is set to be dramatically down on last year after the poor summer weather created difficult conditions for bees.
The combination of wet and windy weather and cool temperatures at key times of nectar production meant bees collected significantly less to deposit into honeycomb cells, according to farmers.
Beekeepers in Scotland have said that the July's rains effectively wiped out honey production for that month, although there was some recovery in August.
But there are fears for the future of some hives with Queens unable to mate and many threatened with starvation during what should have been the high point of summer.
The Scottish Beekeepers Association (SBA) had warned their members to be on their guard during July and to make sure food stocks were filled as bees struggled to find enough to eat.
Ian Craig, of Brookfield, a Trustee at the Association, said: "While the end of the summer overall has not been bad, up to July it was as poor as it gets.
"There was around one good day a week and you need at least two dry, wind-free days to get the queens mating and the honey production in July was zero.
"So we had no spring honey and only a little summer honey."
John Mellis, who farms around 500 hives in Dumfries, said: "The poor honey crop is not the only problem.
"Colonies have failed to build up so are going into winter relatively weak. This means there are not going to be enough winter bees to sustain the hives resulting in a prediction of high winter losses."
However, SBA Education and Promotion of Beekeeping Officer Alan Riach, of Bathgate, West Lothian, said that this year's harvest may not be as bad as first feared, and that help may have come from an unlikely source.
He said: "I don't think it's going to be any worse than last year, and a lot of our members are now urban beekeepers who seem to have fared better than their rural counterparts."
But overall the gloomy picture has been repeated across the UK, with some beekeepers warning that this year's harvest could be third of what is expected from a normal year.
Bee farmer Crispin Reeves, from Haughton Honey based in Cheshire, said: "The honey crop can fluctuate quite widely from one year to the next and, in the main, it's all down to the weather.
"After talking to bee farmers across the country, it looks likely that the honey harvest generally could be around a third of last year's crop.
"We're still processing, but there definitely won't be anywhere near as much English honey around this season as a result of the weather.
"News in the South East is slightly better, but across most of the UK including the North West, Midlands, South West, Wales and other areas it's been a similar picture."
Bee Farmers' Association general secretary Margaret Ginman said some members in the South were reporting average crops while the situation in Scotland was "not just poor, it is disastrous".
She added: "There was under a third of the normal spring blossom honey crop and the long wet summer has meant colonies failed to build up for the heather honey.
"The flowering of the heather itself was late and not as glorious as in some years. Here the crop is expected to be 50 per cent of normal.
"All in all this has proved a challenging year for the bee farming industry. Our members work hard to maintain continuity of supply to our customers."
Nicky Smith, a spokeswoman for the British Beekeepers Association Adopt a Beehive project, said: "Early indications suggest it's been a terrible year for honey.
"Certainly our feeling is that production will be down from last year's average of 32 pounds per hive."
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