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Buzzkill: Surveys Say Bee Colonies Continue To Decline

Bees

Bees have been disappearing for over a decade and two surveys confirm that trend is continuing.

Each quarter last year, the US Department of Agriculture's National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS) surveyed 3,300 beekeeping operations with five or more colonies, and 20,000 beekeepers with less than five colonies.

It's the first official Honey Bee Colony Loss survey, and the agency released their findings last week.

The results are grim. As of January this year, there were 2.59 million, or 8 percent, fewer  than Jan. 1 of last year.

The Honey Bee Colony Loss survey complements the findings of the annual NASS report on honey production and prices for 2015, which found that honey production from producers with five or more colonies was down 12 percent from 2014.

A separate study released on May 10 from the Bee Informed Partnership at the University of Maryland found American beekeepers lost 44 percent of bees from 2015 to 2016. This is up 3.5 percent from the previous year (2014 – 15).

In addition, the Bee Informed survey shows that rates of summer colony losses are catching up to rates of winter colony losses, a trend that differs from usual patterns and could indicate weaknesses caused by pesticides, according to a food activist with Friends of the Earth.

"There's no question that exposure to agrochemicals is a risk factor for honeybees, but there are a lot of very complicated issues in science," said Robert Sears, president of the Eastern Missouri Beekeepers Association, to Bloomberg.

One of those complicated science issues is the varroa mite, a parasite unique to beehives that survives on insect blood. In fact, varroa mites were the top colony stressor for beekeeping operations with five or more colonies last year, according to the NASS report.

The mite was reported in 43 percent of commercial hives between April and June 2015.

Colony collapse disorder – when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear – is another growing concern for American bees and their keepers. Around 114,000 colonies were lost to the disorder in the first three months of this year, compared with 92,000 in 2013, according to the USDA.

Unknown colony health stressors, at 20.8 percent, was the highest cause of loss for operations with less than five colonies during 2015, according to the NASS survey.

University of Maryland entomologist Dennis vanEngelsdorp says that as solutions and scourges evolve, data will help experts answer how and why bees are dying, and what can be done to save them.

Read More:



  • U.S. Bee Colonies Continue to Decline as Pests, Chemicals Blamed (Bloomberg)
  • Bee Blight (Bloomberg)
  • 28% of US bees wiped out this winter, suggesting bigger environmental issues (The Guardian)


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