Statuory clearings and bee-keeping potential. First results and prospects in limestone-based Provence

The statutory clearing against wildfires represents several dozens thousand hectares on the scale departments as the Bouches-du-Rhône and Var. In this study, we showed that in limestone based Provence this clearing is highly detrimental to vegetation melliferous potential when it is realized with heavy mechanical machines and without selectivity. This potential is almost nil during 3 years after clearing and increases only slowly afterward. The very strong decrease in the number of individuals, the size and the bloom of main melliferous species, essentially ligneous plants blooming in spring, is not compensated with a light increase of the herbaceous species and sometimes autumnal blooms. The situation seems a little less critical on acidic soils, but the study must be continued there because the number of studied site is too small. However, mechanical clearings along the public roads and networks, and in large fuelbreaks, represent only a small part of statutory clearings. Most of them concern private houses and public buildings in periurban environments, which surroundings are generally cleared manually or with lighter machines, with fewer consequences.