American Bee Journal • October 2019 Vol. 159 No. 10 • A Close Look @ the Hive: Keeping the Hive Alive

Ramesh Sagili, Associate Professor of Apiculture at the Oregon State University, said “I’m not worried about bees being extinct here. I’m worried about beekeepers being extinct.”

In this article, I present some information on the fall and rise of beekeeping in the U.S. and the importance of beekeepers in the survival of the honey bee. Are bees really going extinct? According to The Species Recovery Trust, 22 species of bee have become extinct in England in the last 200 years. A 2003 survey in New York, where the rusty patched bumble bee was considered historically to be moderately abundant, failed to find any rusty patched bumble bees. So it is true that certain types of bees have disappeared from the world. Unfortunately, when the public hears that bees are vanishing, they think of honey bees. And this is encouraged by inaccurate news reports.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) keeps statistics on beekeeping throughout the world. They show a steady rise in the number of honey bee hives for many decades. For example, their numbers show an estimated 50 million colonies kept by beekeepers in 1960, rising to 81 million now. But beyond that, it is estimated that there are more than 310 million colonies of wild honey bees living untended in Africa. No one knows how many wild colonies of African bees are living in the Americas, but considering their rapid expansion over the past 50 years, it’s entirely plausible there are 200-300 million living there.

So, is it really true that honey bees are declining? It is very difficult to get facts on this question, for several reasons. I will focus on the numbers for the United States. The methods of gathering data have changed over the years, and it is certainly reasonable to question the reliability of the estimates. But around 1900, it was thought that there were at least 3 million hives in the U.S. Some publications suggested that since small numbers of hives on farms were not counted, that the number could be much higher, say 5 million, but officially the figure was set at 3 million.

During World War II, this number doubled, for several reasons. Sugar was rationed, creating a greater demand for honey. But more significantly, beeswax was greatly needed for the war effort. In 1943, the following appeared in the American Bee Journal:

Wax For the Gun Keeps the Axis on the Run —E. L. GAMBLE, Adams, New York. The United States Department of Agriculture says: “Here is a call to everyone who keeps bees. Our military forces use a lot of beeswax, right on the fighting front — in the protective coating on shells and fighting planes; for waterproofing; — a million pounds a year.”

During the war, the number of hives in the U.S. was near 6 million, twice as many as before. But, after the war ended, the demand for honey products collapsed precipitously and the numbers began a downward spiral. Beekeeping associations were highly organized at the time and had significant political clout. By raising the specter of food shortages brought about by the lack of bees to pollinate crops, they were able to get legislation enacted to support the price of honey, which was so low that beekeeping was no longer profitable. Still, the numbers fell and by 1980 there were an estimated 4 million hives. The projected shortfall in pollination did not materialize, but I will talk about that more, later.

In August 1949 this magazine ran an article by Richard C. Potter entitled “The Alarming Decline of the Bee Population in the United States.” We have reprinted it in this issue’s “From the Archives” column on page 1169.

In the 1980s, another thing happened which affected the statistics in a big way. The U.S. government stopped counting hives for several years, and the numbers were fudged during that time. Then, when they began counting again in 1985, they had revised their method, no longer counting beekeepers who had 5 colonies or less. Overnight the total number of hives in the U.S. dropped by one million. To this day, the numbers that you see in the media are off by at least one million — they are only counting about 70% of the hives. Of course, honey production did not plummet at that time, and suddenly it looked like the output of honey per hive had spiked, since the same amount of honey was apparently being produced by a smaller number of hives. This was at a time when the industry was facing its worse crisis ever, the varroa mite.

As far as pollination is concerned, the projected food shortage that was supposed to occur when the number of hives went from 6 million to 3 — that never happened. In fact, if there was a shortage of bees to pollinate, we would expect to see a dramatic rise in fees charged for pollination, which also did not happen. Of course, late in the 20th century, pollination fees began to rise very rapidly for one particular crop: almonds. The acreage of almonds was expanded so much that there simply weren’t enough hives in California and the neighboring states to meet the demand. This raised the price to as high as $200 and led to bees being trucked from as far away as the East Coast, to pollinate almond trees in February. This price is like renting your car to somebody for a month — for the price of the car.

The phenomenon of needing every available hive to be in top condition — in February — has led to some significant problems for U.S. beekeeping. In the 1980s, most of the bees came from California and nearby states, where colonies were in reasonably good condition by the end of January, at least before varroa mites started to cause bee colonies to fail at the end of the season. But when the pollination price skyrocketed, beekeepers in other states wanted to get in on it. In many of these states, honey bees would be wrapped in tar paper and/or covered with snow in January. Beekeepers were loading up hives for shipment, only to find that upon arrival in California, the colonies were unable to meet the strength (population) requirements of the almond growers. The colonies failed to pass and they either were rejected outright, or paid at a lower rate, meaning no profit for the beekeeper.

The point is that beekeepers wanted their highest colony counts in February. It used to be quite the opposite. When beekeepers raised bees solely for honey and wax, they generally reduced their numbers in autumn. There was a saying: Take your winter losses in the fall. Beekeepers would evaluate the colonies, and only keep the best colonies for wintering over, since the investment in terms of honey left on the hive is very high. In fact, the value of honey was so high that some beekeepers simply took all of the honey, killed the bees, and bought packaged bees in the spring (April), wintering no bees.

G. H. Cale wrote a popular monthly page in the American Bee Journal called “All Around the Bee Yard.” He had been added to the Bee Journal as their “Experimental Apiarist.” He described his practice in the management of 800 hives for the Dadant apiaries. In 1947, he wrote the following:

The condition of the colony is of the most importance as far as wintering is concerned, and this is gradually leading to the practice of only wintering colonies in proper condition; that is, with an abundance of young bees, plenty of stores, plenty of pollen reserves and reasonable protection. All other colonies are removed before the winter period begins. This will decrease the winter loss, but it will increase the number of hives that are empty. From our own experience we find thirtyfive out of one hundred hives are empty each spring from all causes and must be replaced one way or another.

More recently, a study by Mehmet Döke and his colleagues at Penn State found that:

Colonies that survived the winter had significantly higher colony weights as well as larger adult worker bee populations in October than colonies that did not survive the winter. We found that geographic origin of stocks did not affect the overwintering survival.

So, the smartest move is not even to attempt to overwinter hives that have a poor chance of making it. Every year, we hear that beekeepers are losing 30-40% of their hives, that these losses are unprecedented. Cale regarded that number as normal. Again, we are faced with the fact that it depends entirely on how statistics are gathered as to whether or not they mean what folks say they mean.

But as for the effect of the decrease in colony numbers on food production, scarcely a day goes by that we don’t hear how “every third bite of food we eat depends on bees,” that without bees we would starve, and so on. A recent 2009 study by Nicola Gallai on the actual contribution of pollinators to the world’s food supply found the following:

Using a bioeconomic approach, we calculated a world value for the contribution of pollinators to the production of crops used directly for human food of €153 billion, which is about 9.5% of the total value of the production of human food worldwide. Vegetables and fruits were the leading crop categories in value of insect pollination with about €50 billion each, followed by edible oil crops, stimulants, nuts and spices. The production value of a ton of the crop categories that do not depend on insect pollination averaged €151 while that of those that are pollinator-dependent averaged €761. Although our valuation clearly demonstrates the economic importance of insect pollinators, it cannot be considered as a scenario since it does not take into account the strategic responses of the markets.

In plain English, the economic value of the crops that require pollinators was found to be less than 10% of the total value of food crops and consisted primarily of non-staple foods.Further, the value of these crops per ton is 5 times that of non-pollinator dependent crops. Finally, they point out that markets respond to shortages in inputs, such as pollinators, as evidenced by the almond crop. For example, the current prices per ton of various crops: almonds, $6000/ton; cherries, $2250; soy, $360; wheat, $211; grass hay, $125-150. The value of bee hives for pollination is directly tied to the value of the crop. And, the crops most dependent on bee pollination are not staples, but nuts and fruits, which are important but not essential to stave off starvation.

An analysis done by Dr. Nicholas Calderone in 2012 showed a very interesting picture. He gathered all the statistics on U.S. bee population and fruit production over the past several decades. At the same time that colony numbers were falling, fruit production was rising, almost in inverse proportion. I asked him how he accounted for the fact that despite lowered numbers of hives available, that fruit production kept going up and up. He suggested that wild pollinators may be doing a lot more of the work than we ever thought, which could be true. However, in my opinion, the number of honey bee colonies required to pollinate the nation’s crops has always been greatly exaggerated. Probably 2 million colonies are adequate for crop pollination, not 4 or 6 million, as the beekeepers have suggested at various times over the years.

Many of us do not keep bees in order to rent them out as pollinators. We do, however, provide a valuable service: Our bees pollinate plants all over the neighborhood and they do it free of charge. For the rest of this article I want to focus on the craft of keeping bees alive. Let’s say for example, you are losing from 30 to 50% of your hives every year, as so many of us are. I don’t like to dump out a hive in fall because it’s below par. Maybe this will be a mild winter, and it will make it, I might think. In any case, I often wind up with far fewer hives in spring than I had hoped for. This presents me with several options.

Option one, give it up. But as this is an article about Keeping the Hive Alive, we are not going there! Two, buy bees. Many people talk about the downside of buying bees every year. Bees from the South are not good bees for Northern beekeeping, the vendors want our bees to fail so we will buy more, it’s not sustainable. I don’t agree with any of these things. First of all, the honey bees that we have originated in cold climates. The Italian bees were selected from populations living in the Alps, and when they were brought to the U.S. in the 1800s, they were found to winter just as well as the northern European bees originally brought from Germany, England, etc.

It was common practice at one time, especially in Canada, to take the entire honey crop from the hives and overwinter none of them. 100% winter loss! Bees would be purchased in the spring, put on drawn combs, and beekeepers would produce hundreds of pounds per hive, yielding a large profit and avoiding the expense and labor of preparing hives for winter. I am not suggesting this method, just saying that in the hands of a skilled beekeeper, package bees can be made to yield a profit, and the bees are capable of overwintering, if varroa levels are kept down. I find that the buildup of packages can be greatly accelerated by adding frames of bees and brood to them, taken from overwintered hives. Pulling brood and bees from strong colonies prevents them from building up too quickly, curtails their urge to swarm, and you get more bees out of the hive if you draw from them judiciously.

Which leads to option three, repopulating your hives using your own bees. Using simple math, if you lose half your hives over winter, all you have to do is split the remaining hives and you are back to where you were. These units may not be suitable for pollination contracts, but that isn’t where we are going with them. They might not make spring honey. If the spring honey flow is your main honey flow, you will have to avoid weakening the best hives or you won’t get honey. Mike Palmer has long advocated using the poor colonies for the purpose of increase and leaving the best to produce honey.

In my area the best and most reliable flows are in summer and fall. In fact, we look forward to the end of August when knotweed makes a major crop. This is followed by goldenrod, which used to be the main flow, before knotweed became so widespread in this region. Following this logic, I have the spring to increase the number of colonies, and if there is a strong honey flow, this simply means the hives can build up on it, and I won’t need to feed them, saving a lot of money.

There is a saying among beekeepers, if your numbers are not increasing, they are decreasing. I always suggest that you need to aim for a lot more hives than you really want. That way, when colonies fail due to queen issues, or what have you, they are simply combined with others. This, as opposed to spending time and money trying to get them back on line. Another saying: Beekeepers spend 90% of their time with 10% of the colonies. Which would you rather be doing, fussing over the duds and laggards — or doing something positive like making new colonies?

Here I am at variance with Mr. Palmer, I think that increase can be made using the best colonies. How this is done depends a lot on the skill level and resources of the beekeeper. At its simplest, making increase can be done using the technique advocated for decades by one of Mike’s Vermont neighbors, Charlie Mraz. He went out in the spring, identified the very best colonies, and split these by moving half the brood and bees onto a new bottom board and putting a lid on it. This method, called the “walk away split,” can be improved upon in various ways. I find that making sure the old queen is in the split, will help hold the bees to the new hive. Otherwise, too many will fly out, and go back to where the queen is. If your budget allows the purchase of queens, you can order them and make the splits three or four days before the queens are due to arrive. Then you simply look for the hives with no eggs, and put the new queens in those.

A technique I learned from my good friend Alan Mikolich also avoids needing to look for the queens. He would take a truckload of bees to a new location and before they had a chance to orient, divide them up into as many hives as possible. A circle of hives would be made from each donor hive, maybe six or even more in each group. When he returned several days later, it was simply a matter of finding out which hive in each group had eggs (and therefore the old queen) and add new queens to all the rest.

However, I think the smartest way of increasing is to take bees and brood from the best colonies, over time. A colony that has successfully survived the winter and is building up normal-ly, will soon be boiling over with bees. What I like to do, is to shake the bees off of about half the brood and place it above a queen excluder for a day or two. This can be over the same hive, or another — the point is to get the brood covered with bees, but without a queen in their midst. These frames of brood and bees can be easily used to make nucs, either by introducing new queens, or forcing them to raise queens on their own. Contrary to what you may have heard, a strong four frame nuc is perfectly capable of raising an excellent queen. The chief worry is that not all of them will succeed (queens get lost on their mating flight a certain percentage of the time). A smart queen producer once told me that if you aren’t getting as many queens as you need, you need to raise twice as many. It’s far easier to handle a surplus, than a shortfall.

Whether beekeeping is on the wane or on the rise, depends on beekeepers. In the U.S. and Europe, numbers are flat or even falling, as the beekeeping public gets older and quits. In developing countries where honey and wax represent an important source of income, numbers are rising steadily and show no signs of abating. Strictly speaking, the honey bee is not a domesticated animal. It is however, dependent on beekeepers in a large part of the world. There probably will always be wild honey bees throughout the tropics.

The business and the science of honey bees has a very long history, and honestly, is not about the come to a full stop any time soon. Beekeeping as an art, as a pastime, may have an even longer memory but its continuance is far less assured. The future of beekeeping as we know it depends upon you and me.

Peter L Borst has worked in the beekeeping industry since his first job working as beekeeper’s helper in Wolcott NY, in 1974. In the late 1970s he helped run a beekeeping supply store in the San Diego area, where he served beekeepers of all levels of expertise.

Peter managed 500 colonies of his own in the 1980s. From 1999 to 2006, he was Senior Apiarist at Cornell's Dyce Lab for Honey Bee Studies. and worked as an apiary inspector for New York State from 2006 to 2008. He is retired from Cornell University, and is a past President of the Finger Lakes Bee Club.

Peter has published over 50 articles on topics as diverse as beekeeping technique, the composition and value of pollen for bees, and the history of bee breeding. He has done presentations on these topics for venues ranging from local elementary schools to beekeeping organizations in many states.