Local beekeepers concerned after hive loss; Bee expert weights in

Two years ago, local hobbyist beekeeper Brian Koper had 21 colonies. Now, he’s left with just three.

Koper recently put out a post on his social media page, asking his beekeeping friends if they’ve experienced similar losses.

“A buddy of mine lives near Columbus, Ohio. He had 45 colonies going into this winter. He has one left,” Koper said.

Another friend of Koper’s put out a survey to see how bee populations were doing. One of the survey respondents was a commercial beekeeper who had 700 colonies. As of his survey response, he’s lost 680.

“This is hitting so hard, and the people that I’ve talked to, they say, ‘We have no idea,'” Koper said.

First News caught up with Dr. Tracy Farone — a bee expert, professor of biology, and published author on honey bees — to see if she had any insight into what could be plaguing the bee population.

Preliminary data on honey bee losses

For most of the data on reported hive losses, Farone referenced Project Apis m., which is currently conducting a national study. The loss survey began in June 2024 and is still open.

“I am happy to hear [Project Apis] assembled a great team of investigators from USDA and from some universities, where they’re really looking at and they’ve taken samples. They’ve already gone out to California and they’ve taken samples of both hives that were dead, hives that were dying, and hives that were doing OK, so they have a good comparison, which is very important in science,” Farone said.

While hobbyist beekeepers, or backyard beekeepers — classified as keepers with less than 50 hives — make up the majority of beekeepers, commercial beekeepers maintain the majority of the bee population itself.

“If you’re a backyard beekeeper and you have two hives and one of your hives die, your loss is 50%. Which sounds terrible, but really, it’s only the loss of one hive,” Farone said. “Now if you’re a commercial beekeeper and you have 10,000 hives and you lose 50% of your hives, that’s 5,000 hives — that’s a big difference.”

Losing hives over the winter is just a natural part of beekeeping, but preliminary data is showing a higher loss percentage than expected.

“When you really drill down on the data that is available right now, they had about a 20-21% more loss than what they expected,” Farone said.

About 37% of commercial beekeepers responded to the Project Apis m. survey, which Farone said is a pretty good response and a larger percentage than they’ve seen in the past.

“Now, it certainly doesn’t represent 100%, and that’s something we have to consider,” Farone said. “When you hear these losses that are out there, where they’re saying millions of hives died, these are all based on the survey data, extrapolations, estimates, and translations of that survey data to the larger scale.”

With the surveys still open, more data has yet to be factored in. It’s important to remember these results coming in are still preliminary.

“It could get worse, it could get better. We’re not really sure what’s going to happen with that at this point,” Farone said.

“They said it was 1.12 million colonies have died. And you think then also, like, ‘I didn’t participate in that study, there’s a lot of people who did not,” Koper said. “So they say 1.12 million, there’s still all those other individuals who did not participate — so what truly is the number?”

Taking a deeper dive into the survey data, a majority of it was reported from North Dakota, which could skew the results since the survey reflects a nationwide rough calculation of losses.

In Pennsylvania, commercial beekeepers reported a 32% loss — however, this data is with less than four beekeepers reporting. Ohio reported a 66% loss, with the same amount of survey respondents. Hobbyist beekeepers in Pennsylvania reported a 61% loss with a 41% hobbyist loss reported in Ohio.

“There can be bias in surveys,” Farone warns. “Because if your hives die, you’re more likely to be concerned and report. If your hives are doing great, you’re going to be like, ‘Heck with this survey,’ delete and move on.”

What could be causing hive losses

Farone said it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly is causing this reported increase in losses and said it likely is attributed to several factors.

“Just because it’s happening to you locally, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s associated with what’s going on or what might be going on nationally,” Farone said.

Investigators are testing the sample hives for common pathogens, including varroa mites, one of the largest killers of honey bees. They’re also testing for nutrition quality in pollen, pesticide residues, and viruses. Another angle investigators are looking into is the possible resistance of varroa mites to commonly used medication.

“It’s just, there’s so many factors anymore, like it’s just stacking up on the bees and the beekeepers year after year, and it’s just becoming unsustainable to manage so many different issues all of the time and still recoup that the next year and keep going,” Farone said.

“It was a series of events, that just one thing after another, and it was just like continued hardship,” Koper said. “Different issues with queens, colonies were just dying off, and I was totally confused as to why. So if you look at a 16-17 month period, I’ve gone from 16 colonies to three. And it’s just, it’s devastating.”

In addition to searching for known issues, experts are also conducting a metagenomic study, which is a genetic study where they look for unknown pathogens. Farone said some people have questioned if bees could have contracted the bird flu, and she said this is highly unlikely.

“I think it’s very important that we do get actual, factual data to move forward and not just freak out and create something and say there’s a disorder that we can’t really describe,” Farone said.

“I think the industry also needs to put forth and explain and put forth some really good messaging about all these complicated factors and what we need to do to try to keep our honey bees as healthy as possible so that we can keep our human population and our animal population as healthy as possible by producing all this healthy food,” Farone continued.

Farone said she has also lost hives this winter. Part of it she attributed to the cold, which she said made it hard to go into the hives and feed/supplement the bees.

“We don’t think about winter as killing the bees by itself. But it’s certainly a stressor. All of these things I’ve talked about, the viruses, varroa, nutrition, weather — all of those things kind of compound, and maybe one or two of those don’t kill a hive, but when you get the fourth one, that’s when it takes it out.”

“I don’t want people to think there is this one devastating sneaky disease that’s getting all of the honey bees,” Farone said. “It’s probably multiple factors, and it’s probably local-related.”

The vital role honey bees play in the economy

While honey is a side product of honey bees that many people consider them known for, their main function is pollination, which accounts for billions of dollars in crops.

“Beekeeping really doesn’t get appreciated for what it is,” Farone said. “It is to pollinate all of our crops, and our agriculture just wouldn’t work without beekeepers, and they often just get pushed off to the side.”

“They say 1 out of every 3 bites we take of food is related to a pollinator,” Koper said. “So if pollinators vanish, then our food vanishes.”

Farone said about 90% of almonds are reliant on honey bee pollination, which takes place in January and February. The approximately 2 million migrating hives are then moved across the rest of the country to help pollinate other crops.

“This year, a commercial beekeeper that I know who is out in California for the almond pollination, he said they are estimating that they will be 300,000-500,000 colonies short for almond pollination,” Koper said. “If you think of all the different foods honey bees pollinate, well, if they’re not pollinating, then we’re not going to have crops.”

“It’s already started to affect commercial operations,” Koper said. “It’ll affect crops, produce that’s out there. In my scale, it’s frustrating, you know, I do it as a hobby and I go to the Youngstown Flea… but it’s just like, frustrating, I had to cancel a couple of my dates because I don’t know [if] I am going to get honey.”

Farone said at this point, they still don’t know if it’s just bee loss or if a larger impact could be felt if there were not enough bees to pollinate the almonds.

“Because if they didn’t, then you could see losses in almonds, or losses in all of the other crops that honey bees, maybe we don’t have enough to pollinate our other crops too. So this is going to take months, maybe even years before we know the impact of this.”

Farone’s advice to beekeepers

For beekeepers experiencing losses, Farone said she would ask them about their managing style.

Some questions include:

• How are you managing mites? What did you do in the fall for mite treatments? What were your mite counts like?
• How are you feeding your bees? What’s the nutritional status of your bees?

She said if people don’t treat or manage mites, that would be her default diagnosis.

“Not to mention, if you allow the varroa to go unchecked, the viruses go up too, because the varroa actually vectors these viruses — it’s kind of like a tick.”

She said there are not a ton of treatments for the viruses yet, so they focus on preventative measures for the mites.

As for feeding, Farone said you need to be sure there is enough nutrition for the bees to get through the winter, whether it be through honey stores, sugar water, or another feeding method.

“When we look at some of these beekeeping surveys, starvation is, unfortunately, is listed as a common cause of hive loss,” she said.

Beekeepers can look into applying for relief for hive loss through the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees, and Farm-Raised Fish (ELAP) program through the USDA.

How you can help local beekeepers and their honey bees

When it comes to keeping bees happy and healthy, some of the best things non-beekeepers can do is plant native flowers and refrain from treating their lawns.

“The dandelions — please do not kill your dandelions,” Koper said.

Some valuable plants for bees include sunflowers, maples, fruit trees, and other native flowers.

For anyone who either wants to get involved with beekeeping or has found a swarm in their yard that they need to be removed, the Columbiana Mahoning County or Trumbull County Beekeepers Associations are there to help.