‘I’ve never seen a knockout punch as strong as this’: Beekeepers troubled by wave of hive deaths
San Antonio-area beekeepers are reeling after discovering the sudden deaths of roughly two dozen urban hives over several weeks — a wave that many local keepers say is unprecedented.
Since late summer, members of the Alamo Area Beekeepers Association (AABA) say they have experienced the sudden collapse of 20 to 30 of their hives, or possibly more — equating to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of local bees. The association has launched an internal task force to look into the exact cause of the hive deaths, with symptoms exhibited by the bees pointing to a poisoning event or events.
While area beekeepers are awaiting results from several entomology labs across the country before placing blame, several of them did note the sudden die-offs coincide with mosquito control spraying and fogging by a few local municipalities, including the City of San Antonio, the City of Castle Hills and Bexar County.
“There is a correlation between the areas where the affected hives are located and the areas that have been sprayed for West Nile virus,” said Rob Holliday, sitting president of the AABA. “However, we don’t have our testing done to know for sure. We’ve engaged Texas A&M and Cornell [universities] in the process.”
In May, the city’s Metropolitan Health District confirmed that a mosquito pool tested positive for the West Nile virus, upping the ante for vector control efforts this year.
“Our Vector Control Program is a mosquito control program that uses Integrated Pest Management methods, as recommended by the Centers for Disease and Prevention, to control mosquitoes,” wrote Rosalie Cisneros, assistant marketing manager for Metro Health, in an emailed statement. “We will fog an area in response to a West Nile Virus (WNV) positive mosquito pool to reduce the number of infected mosquitoes, thereby reducing the risk of WNV transmission to humans & animals.”
Cisneros added that the city notifies the public by posting the area to be fogged on the Metro Health webpage. The city also informs the City Council office about the areas to be fogged, she said. The council office then shares this information on its community social media platforms.
Holliday said the correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, adding the city and local municipalities have done mosquito spraying and fogging in previous years that had little to no effects on local hives.
However, one of the more commonly used integrated pest management methods is rotating the type of pesticide used each year to help reduce the likelihood of pests developing a resistance to a specific bug spray, noted Cecile Parrish, an AABA member who has lost eight hives over the past couple of weeks. The spray or sprays used this year may have been more potent and more toxic to bees, she added.
“We’ve had these hives for years,” Parrish said, and previous mosquito control efforts “never affected us — but this year we’re seeing whole colonies” killed.
‘Canaries in the coal mine’
Parrish, who has a background in science, agreed with Holliday that until the tests come back it’s too early to know for sure what caused the deaths of her hives. However, she lamented that her bees and their hives exhibited signs of poisoning, including the fact that a large number of dead bees were discovered in front of the hives.
Parrish said she had to remove not only eight hives’ worth of dead honeybees but also roughly 30 to 40 pounds of potentially contaminated honey and four to five trash bags of wax honeycomb.
She called the bees “canaries in the coal mine,” noting that honeybees are a type of “indicator species” — a species that reflects the health of its environment. If urban beehives are experiencing this type of mass mortalilty, it could be indicative of how other pollinator species are being affected, Parrish said.
“I worry about our wild populations,” she said.
According to experts, bees are considered the most important species on Earth due to their crucial role as pollinators, which is essential for plant reproduction, and their significant impact on humans’ food supply, making them vital to the global ecosystem.
Holliday said he first received notice of local hive deaths from some of AABA’s 270 members in July. He added that he lost three of his five local hives over the past several weeks.
“When you walk up to a hive and there’s thousands of dead bees in front of it, you quickly realize something dramatic has happened,” he said. A single honeybee hive can have anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 bees.
Since then, more members of their club have come forward reporting similar events, Holliday said. The AABA has launched a small task force in response, looking into how this sort of mass wave event happened and how it can be prevented in the future. Heading up that task force is longtime beekeeper and current AABA secretary Disa Campbell.
Searching for answers
Right now, the task force is trying to collect as much information as possible from AABA members, Campbell told the San Antonio Report Friday. At the AABA’s most recent meeting this past Tuesday, a questionnaire was passed out to members to see how many had been affected.
Campbell noted that not everyone who’s experienced a recent hive death lives directly in San Antonio — adding some were in the Bulverde or Bandera areas, which could point to deaths not involving mosquito control programs within Bexar County. She noted her own hives have experienced partial poisoning incidents before by mistake, from cross-contamination occurring off her dog’s flea and tick shampoo — but currently her hives are doing well.
“The City of San Antonio is very transparent,” she said. “Their website is one of the best I’ve ever seen — it’s very specific about what and where they’re spraying. I’m close to one of the places they sprayed and I saw no blip in my hives.”
Holliday and Parrish sent samples of their dead bees and possibly affected honey and wax for testing. Pesticide tests can take a long time, Holliday said; however, local beekeepers definitely need answers to help prevent this sort of wave from happening again, he said.
“I’ve never seen a knockout punch as strong as this,” Holliday said. “I’ve been affected by sprays before; I’ve seen partial blow to hives that were able to recover, but I haven’t seen it to this scale or as deadly.”
Because the pesticides used by municipalities are typically rotated, Parrish said she is particularly curious to learn which one or ones were used this year — and to see if maybe it can be removed from rotation if they were the cause of death for her hives.
A future game plan
If the bees test positive for the bug sprays used by the local cities and county, it will be a learning experience for everyone, Holliday said.
Across his 35 years of beekeeping, there’s always more learning to do, Holliday said.
Holliday and Campbell said the City of San Antonio has been open and forthcoming with them about their mosquito abatement efforts. Holliday said while he is heartbroken about his lost hives, he also said he understands that the city and county have jobs to do when it comes to public health and safety, as well.
However, all the beekeepers who spoke with the San Antonio Report added the cities and county could reach out to the AABA more directly in the future so they can warn San Antonio area beekeepers. Mitigation efforts to protect one’s urban hives do exist, Holliday noted.
“What we can do is make sure the hives have plenty of water, that’s No. 1,” Holliday said, noting this is where bees most often pick up poison — from contaminated sources of drinking water that they bring back to share with the hive. “No. 2 is we could cover the hives for 24 to 48 hours so the bees can’t go out and forage and that can help protect them while that poison is most potent, as well.”
