Honeybee ‘Crisis’ Now Seen as False Alarm

In 2006 commercial beekeepers began reporting unusually high rates of honeybee die-offs over the winter, blaming a variety of factors for the decline.

Since then the media have warned of a “beepocalypse” threatening America’s food supply. In 2013, NPR said bee declines could bring “a crisis point for crops,” and a Time magazine cover looked ahead at a “world without bees” that are responsible for pollinating one-third of the crops Americans eat.

But here’s the buzz now: There are more honeybee colonies in the U.S. today than in 2006. Data released in March by the Department of Agriculture showed that the number of honeybee colonies is at a 20-year high, and U.S. honey production is at a 10-year high.

“Since colony collapse disorder began in 2006, there has been virtually no detectable effect on the total number of honeybee colonies in the United States, nor has there been any significant impact on food prices or production,” according to the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a Montana-based non-profit environmental think tank, which attributes the industry’s health to the “savvy” of commercial beekeepers.

The beekeepers have been actively rebuilding their colonies, often by splitting healthy colonies into multiple hives and buying new queen bees from commercial breeders.

The fees beekeepers charge farmers to provide pollination services have risen for a few crops, but the higher fees have helped beekeepers offset the cost of rebuilding their hives.

According to the USDA, the honeybee industry thrived last year, with the number of colonies rising to 2.74 million from 2.64 million in 2013. The honey yield per colony also rose, from 56.6 pounds to 65.1 pounds, and production increased from 149 million pounds to 178 million.

Yet the Obama administration last year announced the formation of a task force to develop a “federal strategy” to promote honeybees and other pollinators. Last month the task force disclosed a plan aimed at reducing honeybee-colony losses to “sustainable” levels. It calls for more than $82 million in federal funding to promote pollinator health.

PERC observed: “Somehow, without a national strategy to help them, beekeepers have maintained their colonies and continued to provide the pollination services our modern agricultural system demands.

“With U.S. honeybee colonies now at a 20-year high, you have to wonder: Is our national pollination strategy a solution in search of a crisis?”

Lied to again!

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