U. S. Honey Bee Industry Struggles

U. S. Honey Bee Industry Struggles with 34% Colonies Loss

© 2010 by Linda Moulton Howe of www.earthfiles.com


“The rate of honey bee loss experienced by the industry is unsustainable.”
- Apiary Inspectors of America Survey, Winter 2009-2010

A total 33.8% of U. S. commercial honey bee colonies
were lost in 2009-2010. But some individual beekeepers had to
replace 75% to 100% of their colonies.


Before the fall of 2006 and the first report of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD),
the U. S. commercial honey bee industry generally thrived on California almond
pollination, other orchard crops, vegetables and berries. But in January 2010,
many commercial beekeepers who trucked colonies to California for
almond pollination lost nearly 100 percent of their hives.



Updated: May 5, 2010 Gainesville, Florida - On April 22, 2010, the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the U. S. Department of Agriculture ARS Honey Bee Lab in Beltsville, Maryland, reported, “Preliminary Results: Honey Bee Colonies Losses in the U. S., Winter 2009-2010.”
[ See More Information below for complete summary report.]

Back in the winter of 2006-2007, Pennsylvania commercial beekeeper Dave Hackenberg reported a 60% loss of his honey bees and he meant gone - no bees at all in most of his colonies. That began the first scientific investigation of what came to be known around the world as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Where did the bees go? Why didn't the bees return to their hives? After five years of serious research, apiary specialists still don't have a final answer to those questions. But the new AIA survey shows that honey bees are under assault from a wide range of problems beyond CCD.

“Responding beekeepers (to the AIA survey) attributed their losses to:

- Starvation 32%
- Weather 29%
- Weak fall colonies 14%
- Varroa and other mites 12%
- Poor queens 10%
- CCD 5%

A total loss of 33.8% of managed honey bee colonies was recorded. This compares to total losses of 29%; 35.8%; and 31.8% recorded respectively in the winter surveys of 2008-2009; 2007-2008; 2006-2007.

All told, the rate of loss experienced by the industry is unsustainable.”

One of the authors of the AIA report is Jerry Hayes, Assistant Chief, Bureau of Plant and Apiary Inspection, Apiary Inspection Section, Division of Plant Industry, Florida Department of Agriculture, Gainesville, Florida, and I talked with him today about the new AIA U. S. commercial honey bee survey for winter 2009 to 2010.

Interview:

Jerry Hayes, Asst. Chief, Bureau of Plant and Apiary Inspection, Apiary Inspection Section, Division of Plant Industry, Florida Dept. of Agriculture, Gainesville, Florida:
“I WAS SURPRISED READING THE HONEY BEE REPORT THAT THE SITUATION STILL SEEMS TO BE AS BAD AS IT IS.

Yes, and we’re surprised, too, and concerned and a little embarrassed as well. We researchers thought we could do better at knowing more answers and improving the honey bee health by now.

When you look at bee losses through the rest of the other eight or nine months (beyond winter 2009-2010), many commercial beekeepers shared with me they have had to replace 75% to 100% of their bees through a whole 12-month cycle. The question is: how long can they do that? We keep saying that this is unsustainable and it is.

And I guess it’s tied to almond pollination that is driving and paying the bills for most commercial beekeepers. If the price of almonds goes down, or California has increased water restrictions that require almond acreage to be taken out of production. And also, there are strains of almonds now being created that are self-fertile, so they don’t require insect pollination – that would dramatically impact at least the commercial part of the beekeeping industry.


Hives of honey bees are loaded on to truck for transport up and down,
and between, American coasts as pollinators for hire.


UC Davis bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk in a Dixon, California,
almond orchard in 2010. Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey.


Western honey bee, or European honey bee (Apis mellifera),
gathering pollen from almond flower. On average, 34% of American
honey bees in commercial hives died by spring 2010. Some commercial
beekeepers reported having to replace up to 100% of their
colonies. Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey.

IF I UNDERSTAND CORRECTLY, WE IN THE UNITED STATES ARE DOWN NOW TO ONE MAJOR CROP, ALMONDS IN CALIFORNIA, THAT ARE KEEPING THE COMMERCIAL HONEY BEE INDUSTRY GOING?

Yes, the commercial industry for sure. Honey production is not a moneymaker anymore with all the honey imports from third world countries. The cost to produce honey in Florida, for example, is about $1/pound. But honey is being brought into the United States, and specifically Florida as I know this region, for 50 to 60 cents a pound.

It takes about 1.3 to 1.4 million colonies just to pollinate almonds. If that commercial market perhaps goes away because almond growers are shifting to self-pollinating orchards and to importing pollinators from Australia and Mexico – American beekeeper business will collapse.



Honey Bees Are Starving

ONE OF THE STATISTICS THAT JUMPED OUT AT ME IN YOUR “PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF HONEY BEE COLONIES LOSSES IN THE U. S., WINTER 2009-2010” IS THE PARAGRAPH THAT STATES, “RESPONDING BEEKEEPERS ATTRIBUTED 32% OF THEIR LOSSES TO STARVATION. WHAT DOES THAT 32% STARVATION MEAN?

That means the beekeeper didn’t leave enough resources in the colony so they would have enough food to eat over winter. Or the bees were in a northern winter situation and the bees could not be fed carbohydrates and sugars to keep them alive because perhaps the weather was so cold that the bees ate up their food prematurely. For example, recently the Midwest had a very cold, rainy winter that did not allow bees to store surplus honey for use later on. That is one of the problems.

Beekeepers can certainly purchase sugar syrups to supplement feedings, but a lot of the beekeepers simply did not have money to do that. So, they crossed their fingers and some of them won and some of them lost.

IS STARVATION IN ANY WAY RELATED TO COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER?

No, not really, because when bees die of starvation they die in the hive and that’s where their dead bodies will be. Colony Collapse Disorder is where the bees disappear entirely from the colony.



“Poor Queens”

ANOTHER STATISTIC THAT STUCK OUT IS THAT 10% OF THE BEEKEERS REPORT “POOR QUEENS.” WHAT DOES POOR QUEENS MEAN?

The queen is the only fertile female in the colony of honey bees. She is the mother of everyone. So, when a queen is not fertile enough, not laying enough eggs to keep the colony populations up, then those colonies will get smaller. In winter situations, the bees cannot generate enough heat to stay alive. So, the honey bees will die in a colony just from lack of critical mass needed to produce enough honey.

Poor queens – we’re seeing more and more of this. The queens just aren’t good. So, the question is: Is the queen damaged in some way? Or is it the drone that is not contributing enough sperm that can be used over time by the queen. Both of these weaknesses can be caused by pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals used by beekeepers to control the varroa mites.


Varroa mites are about 1 millimeter long
and suck blood from both adult honey bees and their
developing brood. Image courtesy Univ. of Kentucky.

If you’ll make a fist and put it some place on your body, that’s how large this mite is on a honey bee and sucking the bee’s blood. And then you add in chemicals, herbicides and poor diet and honey bees are going to get sick. It's just like if I fed you a nutritionally incomplete diet of Hershey chocolate bars and then stressed you by loading your hive on a semi-truck and hauling your 3,000 miles and unloading you and putting you in contact with herbicides and pesticides, it would be like my spraying your face with Raid every day. Then if you have a big blood-sucking mite on you, you’re going to get sick!

This is exactly what we are doing with honey bees. But that’s the working business model! We don’t have any replacements right now and we don’t have any pollinators to take the place of honey bees.



121 Different Pesticides
Within 887 Wax and Pollen Samples
Penn State University Research

ONLY A MONTH OR SO AGO, THERE WAS APUBLISHED STUDY OF POLLEN THAT CONFIRMED MANY PESTICIDES.

[ Editor's Note: “High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals in North American Apiaries: Implications for Honey Bee Health,” published March 19, 2010, in PLOS One. ]

Certainly honey bees have a weak enzyme system to break down chemicals. They don’t have a liver like we do to break things down. Once their enzymes are used up, they are gone. Are all these things good for honey bees? No, they are not. Contaminated pollen stored in hives can end up causing bees to get sick and die this way:

Honey bees don’t eat pollen. Honey bees collect pollen for protein, vitamins, minerals, lipids, but pollen is the male element of the flower and is protected from the environment by a silica shell around it. Silica is like glass. So, honey bees collect pollen and then add a variety of bacteria and yeast and fungi so t hat when the pollen is packed and stored in hive cells, it goes through a fermentation process that produces ‘bee bread.’ During the fermentation process, pressure builds up in the packed pollen and breaks open the silica shell and releases all the goodies and is preserved with lactic acid.

So, if you have a pollen that has a lot of chemicals and pesticides in it and even fungicides and you goof up the balance of these bacteria and fungi and yeast that the bees add to it to ferment it to make their bee bread and the fermentation process is not complete, then you are interfering with honey bee health by limiting their nutrition.

COULD THAT RELATE TO THE 32% STARVATION STATISTIC IN YOUR HONEY BEE REPORT?

It certainly could. But there are a lot of other things to consider. Honey bees will forage efficiently in about a 2 to 2.5 mile radius of their colony, so they are environmental samplers. They bring a lot of things back to the colonies ranging from golf courses to sprayed lawns and airports and the roadsides. Honey bees are out there trying to gather diverse pollens and nectars to get complete nutrition, kind of like our human food pyramid. As a very small life form, an insect, that has a shallow immune system and shallow ability to break down chemicals, they can go down hill fast when things are out of whack.

IF IT IS NOT ENTIRELY COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER IN THE 2009-2010 SAMPLED PERIOD, YOU STILL ARE REPORTING 33.8% COLONY LOSSES. THAT IS EVEN GREATER THAN THE 31.8% LOSS REPORTED BACK IN FALL 2006 WHEN CCD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED. SO DOESN’T THAT MEAN THE SITUATION IS NOW WORSE?

Yes! The data doesn’t lie. Those are the numbers.



“Unsustainable” U. S. Commercial
Honey Bee Industry

IT SEEMS THAT EVERYTHING IN YOUR HONEY BEE REPORT IMPLIES THAT THE COMMERCIAL BEEKEEPING INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES COULD COME TO AN END – YOUR REPORT SAYS THE ABOVE-30% DIE-OFFS ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE.

That certainly is possible. I don’t know if it will come to an end, but it will certainly shrink. And if somebody else outside the U. S. borders can pollinate faster, better, cheaper, all you have to do is go into the produce section of your grocery store and read the labels about where food is coming from now. If you think the use of chemicals in the U. S. is bad, you ought to go to Guatemala and that will scare you to death!

If it wasn’t for beekeepers being able to take one hive of honey bees and split it and make two hives of honey bees and recoup losses, the U. S. commercial beekeepers would already be out of business.”