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It’s been a difficult year for the honeybee, and an even harder one for beekeepers. When taking their bees out of winter conditions, beekeepers across the U.S., including in Nebraska, found entire colonies dead. Experts haven’t figured out why.
A non-profit for bee research and education, Project Apis m., recently conducted a nationwide survey of beekeepers to measure their colony losses. Their data analysis from last month shows about 1.6 million colonies were lost.
The survey found that Nebraska beekeepers lost around 10,000 hives—about 67% of commercial colonies.
Brad Plantz runs a small beekeeping operation called Country Road Farms in Morse Bluff. He lost 72% of his colonies this year.
“In the middle of February, when I went out to check on them, I saw that only six of them were left alive out of 22 that I put away in the winter,” Plantz said. “And of those six, only four were really doing well.”
In seven years of beekeeping, Plantz has never experienced this.
“It’s a gut punch,” Plantz said. “But you’ve got to pick yourself up and keep going forward.”
Looking to understand the losses, Plantz called Dr. Judy Wu-Smart, a honeybee health expert who runs the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Bee Lab.
As an associate professor and extension specialist, Wu-Smart works to educate over 4,000 beekeepers in the Midwest. She said it’s normal for beekeepers to lose about 30% of their bees over winter, and small operations and hobbyists sometimes have bigger losses. This year, experienced commercial operations have been hit, too.
“The higher losses are being reported by our commercial guys — our experienced beekeepers that have generally had really good control of their mites and their pests and their diseases,” Wu-Smart said. “There’s definitely something that we need to look deeper into, and it’s something beyond management.”
While not all beekeepers were affected, Wu-Smart said that doesn’t mean those who were did something wrong.
“These are very unpredictable losses,” Wu-Smart said. “Even if you are managing everything you're supposed to be, that doesn't necessarily protect you from these losses.”
Beekeepers have shared samples with scientists so they can test for potential causes, but answers could still be weeks away.
Plantz said the response is delayed due to lack of available funding.
“The group that has the expertise and should be coordinating this nationwide is the USDA,” Plantz said. “But unfortunately, right now, because of what's going on in Washington, their hands are somewhat tied, and they're not being funded.”
With cuts to government organizations, including the USDA, it’s difficult to coordinate an emergency response to the colony deaths. Federal grant freezes have also impacted researchers’ ability to conduct new or continuing research.
USDA labs are giving attention to samples from states with larger commercial operations, but the UNL Bee Lab is testing Midwest samples.
"We as an industry are hampered a little bit by all the crazy things that are happening politically,” Wu-Smart said. “That freezes our funding and our ability to write grants to do this type of research. We're doing it out of pocket.”
Project Apis m. estimates the deaths are a $600 million economic hit to the beekeeping industry, a figure based on lost revenue from pollination contracts, honey income, and the cost to replace colonies.
Danielle Downey, executive director of Project Apis m., said there is no replacement for the pollination services bees provide to the agricultural industry.
“This mobile resource to pollinate our food is a very special industry, and we don't have a backup plan if these businesses fail,” Downey said.
Beekeepers often lend their colonies to farmers for pollination. For example, almonds heavily rely on pollination from honeybees, and without them, production of the California-grown crop would sharply decline.
Honeybee products and services themselves are worth about $700 million a year, but their role in pollination has a much wider economic impact. Because pollination from honeybees can increase crop yield and increase the size and weight of produce, the USDA values pollinators’ added revenue to crop production at $18 billion a year.
While honeybees are known for directly pollinating fruits and vegetables, Downey says pollination touches many other parts of our food system.
“Bees also pollinate plants that you need a seed for,” Downey said. “People don't often think of it, but the alfalfa that we use to feed cattle for dairy and meat industries require seeds so that people can plant hay and feed those animals.”
Downey says beekeepers are resilient — just like their bees. However, without clear answers on the cause of colony deaths, it may be hard for them to recover.
“The problem is with the losses continuing to rise, and the input costs to rebuild going up, some of these businesses may not make it,” Downey said.
She said there likely isn't a simple explanation.
“It's a very complex organism, and they're vulnerable to such large areas of the land management,” Downey said. “A single bee can forage many miles away, so you can imagine they get into all kinds of things.”
Wu-Smart says Nebraska’s beekeeping industry has been dwindling for years. As Nebraska’s agriculture industry chooses less-diverse crops, she says bees have less access to quality nutrition. With weaker bees, losses increase, and beekeepers move out of state.
She added this year is still abnormal.
“Within our state, beekeepers have reportedly lost almost 10,000 hives just from our state,” Wu-Smart said. “And it takes some time for beekeepers to recover from those losses.”
The beekeeping industry experienced something like this before, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in 2006 and 2007. Beekeepers experienced high colony losses over the winter. No cause was ever determined, but the industry did bounce back.
Wu-Smart specializes in how pesticides affect bees. She suggests that over-spraying pesticides — especially mixtures that aren’t tested for wildlife safety — could be a potential factor.
“That really reduces the amount of forage that bees have in terms of their nutrition, which then makes them less robust to the diseases and the pests and the other chemical exposures they have to deal with,” Wu-Smart said.
She said the bee losses also could be a result of the human response to climate change.
“The erratic weather patterns are actually helping some of our pests, insects and weeds get out of hand,” Wu-Smart said. “And so, what do we do? We take the next thing, and we spray it, and we mix chemicals and try to get rid of it.”
Wu-Smart said dying pollinators are a red flag from our planet.
Plantz is working to rebuild. He bought new bees from a friend and split up his stronger colonies, already assuming that his losses will be high next year too.
“Don't count your chickens before they're hatched,” Plantz said. “I just assumed I was always going to lose 30% of my colonies, so I really wasn't prepared for this year. I need to be better at expecting the unexpected.”
The new colonies won’t produce as much honey, so Plantz’s usual revenue will take a hit. In the meantime, he’s running a Facebook group to share information and encourages people to support bee research.
Plantz says there is still hope for recovery.
“The bee industry is not falling apart this year,” Plantz said. “I'm not very good at crystal-balling, so I don't know when the catastrophe hits. If it's in a year, two years or never, I don't know.”