Honeybees are having a tough year — including in Austin
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Beekeepers across the country are reporting high rates of honeybee loss this season, and Texas is no exception.
A recent survey from Project Apis m., a nonprofit dedicated to beekeeping science, found that American commercial beekeepers lost about 62% of their bees between June and March — the highest rate in almost two decades. In Texas, commercial beekeepers lost around 67% of their bees on average.
Beekeeping industry experts have sounded the alarm that these losses could have a detrimental impact on produce that relies on honeybees as pollinators, including California almonds.
Garett Slater, a professor and honeybee expert at Texas A&M University’s Department of Entomology, said it’s possible some Texas crops, such as watermelons, could also take a hit.
“It depends if the beekeepers can make up their numbers or not,” Slater said. “It’s kind of a waiting game, and we’ll learn more in the next few months.”
Scientists are still trying to figure out why honeybees are struggling. According to Project Apis m., experts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and university labs are investigating a range of possible contributing factors, including pathogens, pesticide use and environmental impacts.
“The USDA … mobilized quickly to collect samples in California, and we anticipate results soon,” said Steven Coy, American Honey Producers Association President, in a statement shared by Project Apis m.
Austin-area beekeepers reflect on losses
In Central Texas, hobbyist beekeeping has grown in popularity since a 2012 bill gave landowners the opportunity to gain an agricultural valuation on their property by keeping bees — effectively, a tax cut.
Sarah Denman’s business Bee Salty leases and maintains hives for landowners throughout Central Texas. Denman isn’t a commercial beekeeper — she estimates she maintains between 350 and 400 hives, compared to the thousands often overseen by commercial operations — but she, too, has noticed bees struggling this year.
“I have lost more bees this year than I have ever before, and I think there's a bunch of variables for that,” Denman said.
Denman said she suspects pesticide use may be partially to blame. Additionally, she said unfavorable rain patterns in the spring and fall last year made it hard for bees to build up food stores before winter.
Kat Jones, who works with Denman and also owns her own small apiary, lost about a tenth of her own hives in early March.
“It was a very up and down winter, and that last really cold snap that happened right at the end of February was pretty hard on the bees,” she said.
Tiny enemies
Weather swings in Central Texas can’t account for nationwide losses, but Jones said she believes many bee habitats around the country are experiencing difficult climate shifts.
Slater, however, believes a long-time enemy of the honeybee is likely to blame: the varroa mite, a parasite that feeds on bees and transmits viruses. He said the mites have appeared more resistant to the pesticide commonly used to treat them over the past five years. It's one possiblity scientists are currently investigating.
That’s why Slater's lab at Texas A&M is focused on breeding bees that are resistant to varroa mites.
“Even if we switch to a new treatment, there’s always going to be a risk … of resistance,” he said. “So I think the most long-term sustainable solution is always going to be breeding.”
Denman said she believes the increased popularity of hobbyist beekeeping may also play a role in the spread of viruses. It’s great to have more pollinators around, she said — but there are also challenges that come with density, with more bees competing for resources and potentially sharing mites with other colonies.
“If you have an overpopulated area, it's easy for disease to spread, right?” she said.
However, after around a decade of working with the pollinators, she feels hopeful that bees will bounce back: they're resilient, she said.
“They came out of winter a little bit more puny than they have in years past, but I see them recovering and doing a lot better now,” she said. “So I feel really hopeful for this year.”
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