The US beekeeping community has been facing alarming losses of colonies since Summer 2024. Surveys indicate that over 60%… yes, over SIXTY PERCENT of the commercial bee population is gone, and for smaller scale and hobby beekeepers, that number is 50% and more. According to several sources, there are around 3 million managed beehives in the US. According to a survey of the commercial beekeeping industry, about 2 million of these beehives are commercially managed and over 1.1 MILLION of these hives have died. This is presenting a critical issue for the American food supply, as commercial beekeepers and their hives provide vital pollination services for crops like almonds, apples, cherries, squash and countless other crops where farmers bring in bees to improve crop yields.
The most frightening part of this issue is that no one knows WHAT or WHY this is happening. Some of you may remember the colony collapse situation 10+ years ago, and there STILL has not been a solid determination of what caused it, though there has been much speculation (as we are seeing now as well.) However, one thing we learned back then is that our honey bees are resilient creatures, and there have been some encouraging reports that colonies are starting to recover.
We were incredibly fortunate in that we lost only one of our three bee colonies. Our remaining colonies look strong and we’ve already given them each a box for making honey. We are bringing in a few more colonies and are hoping to trap a few swarms and hope to be able to offer our locally grown honey this summer.