Is the honey bee crisis really over?

Last week was National Pollinator week, and while there have been some media reports highlighting the growth in hives, Danielle Downey, executive director of the nonprofit Project Apis m., talks in this episode of the "Tip of the Iceberg" podcast about hive growth in the news, challenges still facing the honey bee industry and the critical role honey bees play in food production.

Downey says 1 in 3 bites of food depends on honey bees for pollination — that’s the direct role honey bees play, she said. This is why her organization, Project Apis m., helps fund honey bee research to support hive health.

“The way that we grow food has changed into really big systems and the number of people we're feeding is increasing so the pressure on those systems is just really high, and honey bees are a very important unsung hero in those systems,” she said.

What those in the produce industry may not know is there are a small number of commercial beekeepers who move the hives into each specialty crop for pollination across the country. And this pressure to pollinate crops as well as threats from invasive species such as the varroa mite and diseases like colony collapse disorder continue to threaten an already vital part of produce.

“The honey bee will not go extinct, but the pressures on the businesses that provide that pollination — many of them collapse all the time just like other businesses so the bee health crisis continues,” she says. “Year over year, we see 40% losses and that means if you go into winter with 100 colonies the next year you come out you've lost 40 of them. It's not sustainable, and the way that those businesses stay healthy is to divide the bees that come through and build their numbers back up each year.”

This is a significant cost for beekeepers, and the margins continue to get thinner and thinner while the demand for honey bees to pollinate crops grows.

 

Along with the varroa mite and colony collapse disorder, Downey says the habitat in which honey bees live is changing. 

“There's just less natural forage on the landscape to support bees,” she said. “You may notice there's less bugs on your windshield when you make a long drive, you may notice there's less flowers in the ditch, and all of that is connected to the environment that just doesn't support healthy bees as well as it used to.”

She says recent media coverage of an increase in colonies may not be as great of news as it seems. Downey suspects some of the numbers are duplicate counting as commercial hives go from California almonds to Washington to Texas and then to North Dakota.

“We certainly don't see the large beekeeping businesses growing,” she said. “So, I think we're still very tight. The pressure on the bees is high. The margin for error is less and less, and the consequence if we don't have enough bees is that we don't get pollination of the food crops, so we'll have less of them, [and] they'll be more expensive and less accessible.”

Bees also have new threats such as the Asian giant hornet, which was discovered in British Columbia and found in Washington state, and the yellow-legged hornet, found in the Southeast. Downey says the USDA took an aggressive control strategy to eradicate any nests of the Asian giant hornet — also called the murder hornet due to how it destroys honey bee hives. She says in two years, the USDA has not found any queens or nests in the West, and she suspects the USDA will take a similar approach to control the yellow-legged hornet.

“This is why beekeepers feel like the crisis never really relents," she said. "They're always having to watch and prevent that next worst thing from finishing off the hives and always be trying to rebuild. So, although we haven't fallen off the cliff, I think the pressure is still really high.”

Downey says throughout the nonprofit’s existence, Project Aphis m. supported about 200 honey bee research projects totaling $13 million. Visit ProjectApism.org to learn more.