Honeybees are vital for much of our food, but they continue to struggle. That’s today’s This Land of Ours.
Pollinators are currently in the spotlight, as it is National Pollinator Week. We checked in with beekeeper and former president of the American Beekeeping Federation, Gene Brandi, who said there are still problems for honeybees.
“Honeybees in the USA are still not well, in the sense that beekeepers are having considerable losses, losing far larger numbers of colonies than they would like,” he said. “This is pretty much an ongoing phenomenon since 2006/2007.”
He said for this year, the national average is around 40 percent winter loss and likely 50 percent or greater annual loss of bee colonies, though the official numbers are not yet released. Each year, beekeepers must work to rebuild their colonies, and each year, they hope bees are available.
“Fortunately, queen bees were available actually a little bit earlier than normal this year,” Brandi said. “Normally, we start getting queens in early April. We started getting them in late March this year. So, we were able to get all of our ‘dead-outs’ filled and queen-right again.”
Tomorrow, we’ll hear how drought around the nation is affecting honeybees.
Listen to Sabrina Halvorson’s This Land of Ours program here.
Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.
Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker who specializes in agriculture. She primarily reports on legislative issues and hosts The AgNet Weekly podcast. Sabrina is a native of California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.