jul-aug-2020

If you would like to find out more about the annual colony loss and management survey results, or to explore the survey data for your state or region, you can do so by visiting our website at: research.beeinformed.org/loss-map/. To help the Bee Informed Partnership continue our important work to improve U.S. honey bee health, please consider providing a donation, which you can do online at: beeinformed.org/donate/. IN YOUR ORCHARD which can increase their nutritional stress and risk of starvation. Rainy weather may also result in the need for almond growers to increase the amount or frequency of fungicide application while the bees are in the orchards, which can increase their risk of exposure to these chemicals. Finally, the poor weather conditions also made it more difficult for queen breeders to raise queen bees that the rest of the country’s beekeepers depend on, with some California beekeepers reporting the highest queen bee failure rates in 30 years. One Season Influences the Next So we see how weak colonies in the fall of one year (2018) may increase the risk of winter loss the following year. Similarly, poor spring conditions (2019) and the challenges it brings, coupled with an already challenging winter, will also present a challenge for summer bees, and may indeed be why the summer loss rates spiked to their highest levels in the survey’s history. However, such a large turnover in colonies results in a higher proportion of young colonies with new queens, which may improve their chances of making it through the winter, reducing winter loss rates the following season (2020). The Importance of Monitoring While multiple, recurrent, interacting factors continue to create challenges for beekeepers, it is only through continued monitoring of long-term colony health and management that we can begin to capture the seasonal and annual trends of U.S. honey bees. Furthermore, we can now also begin to look for geographic patterns of risk as well, to determine if certain parts of the country face greater risks and when. Jeri L. Parrent, Bee Informed Partnership Grants Program Coordinator 3 2 A L M O N D F A C T S