Adirondack beekeepers report surge in hive loss

Excessive rise in bee deaths are impacting local honey producers as well as crop pollination on a national level

Over the last few months, beekeepers in the Adirondacks are seeing an unprecedented number of bee deaths. 

Cindy Elsenbeck, education coordinator with the Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association, the largest beekeeping club in New York, serving about 400 members spread across nine counties, as well as neighboring states, lost the entirety of her operation in December. 

“We are at what is colony collapse disorder again,” she said. “We’re not [officially] calling it that, but the losses this winter are excessive.” 

Colony collapse disorder, which was first reported in 2006, occurs when the majority of adult honeybees disappear from a hive. While beekeepers often lose a number of bees over the winter, usually the hives can recover. After this season, Elsenbeck says it make take at least two or three years for beekeepers to recover their losses.  

Honeybees surround their hive on a hot day. Beekeepers are reporting record losses so far this year. Photo provided by the Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association

At the Champlain Valley Bee Association, with its approximately a hundred members stretching from Pottersville up into Canada, President Dick Crawford says something similar. 

“Right now, in the Champlain Valley…we’re looking at about a 55% loss of bees this winter,” he said, “and we do not know yet why.”

Like Elsenbeck, Crawford also saw these losses within his own beekeeping operations. 

Some beekeepers, like John and Manon Mullane of Miss Bee Haven Apiary in Jay, have yet to look inside their hives to see how the bees fared over the winter, but John noted he was “concerned to see if whatever has been going on elsewhere has been happening” among his colony. 

“Hive collapse is generally when, for whatever reason, the majority of worker bees leave a queen and a little skeleton crew in the hive, but not enough to keep the hive going or to keep the newly hatched brood alive, bringing in food for them. While I have had hives in the past where that’s happened, I’ve never had the majority of our hives wiped out like that,” he said.

While the cause of the current bee loss is undetermined, with research ongoing, Elsenbeck theorizes that it may be a combination of factors, including pathogens and pesticides.

Food production at risk

In February, the Almond Board of California issued a statement noting “alarming” honeybee losses ahead of the almond pollination season that “could significantly impact pollinator services and food production.” A similar statement from Project Apis m., a nonprofit dedicated to bee-related research and innovation, described this winter’s losses as “severe, broad and may impact food security.” 

“It’s going to affect agriculture. We’re going to have to import apples, cherries and blueberries, because we’re not going to have the bees to pollinate them this year.” 

Cindy Elsenbeck, education coordinator with the Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association

“It’s going to affect agriculture. We’re going to have to import apples, cherries and blueberries, because we’re not going to have the bees to pollinate them this year,” said Elsenbeck. 

“The big commercial people that put their bees away in cold storage for the winter and take them out in February to go to the almond [farms in California] were already seeing a big loss. Right now, in almonds alone, they do not have enough colonies of bees there to pollinate the almond crop,” said Crawford. “This will affect all the other commercial [beekeepers] that go down through the South, starting in Florida and Texas and working their way north. Bees will probably not be available for what they need to pollinate. It could possibly happen up here in May when people bring in tractor-trailer loads of bees for the apples.”

Beekeepers working on their hives. Photo provided by Miss Bee Haven Apiary

Soldiering ahead

Still, North Country beekeepers say, despite the long winters, the Adirondacks is a great place to keep bees. If you can find a spot near plenty of undeveloped wilderness, bee colonies will thrive on the diverse flora. 

Regional beekeepers also urge Adirondack residents to be mindful of how their individual actions may impact bee populations. Elsenbeck recommends reserving just a quarter of one’s lawn to growing pollinator-beneficial flowers, as well as opting for bee-safe lawn pesticides, if one chooses to use them at all. The Mullanes likewise note that eliminating common yard plants like dandelions and clover through mowing or pesticides not only removes a source of bee food from the environment but also could inadvertently poison the local bee population.

If nothing else, though, it’s vital that community members pay attention to the current threat facing both regional and national bee populations, with John Mullane saying, “It would be so awful if, because we ignore where we may be now [and] the fact that there are so many issues and problems, we just don’t do anything about it and find ourselves in pretty big trouble… If we lose the bees or take a big dent in the bee population, our food supplies is going to be in trouble. The prices are going to spike like crazy and it’s going to have a huge effect on everyone’s pocketbooks… I hope we can address it before it gets there.”