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We just wrapped the most deadly winter on record for commercial honey bees in the U.S. They not only make honey, they also pollinate more than a hundred U.S. crops here for a total of $18 billion in agricultural revenue. KVPR's Kerry Klein reports from central California, where the bee industry is scrambling to recover from these sudden, massive losses.
KERRY KLEIN, BYLINE: Tucked away on the outskirts of the city of Visalia is a honey farm. It's got chickens, pet cats and lots and lots of bees.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEES BUZZING)
KLEIN: How many bees do you think are in the air right here, right now?
DAVID BRADSHAW: Thirty thousand, maybe.
KLEIN: David Bradshaw has...
(SOUNDBITE OF ROOSTER CROWING)
KLEIN: ...Been a commercial beekeeper for 50 years. His bees pollinate almonds, avocados, kiwis and olives. He also sells honey. But this past winter, something strange started happening at his bee boxes.
BRADSHAW: You're expecting a lot of bee activity - bees flying in and out, collecting pollen, nectar - and, you know, there's, like, no activity. And as you open the box, there's no bees.
KLEIN: Some of his bees had deformed wings. Others were dead or just gone.
BRADSHAW: We try to clean it up as it comes in, but, you know, pretty soon it was, like, overwhelming. We just couldn't keep up with the amount of dead hives coming in.
KLEIN: Of the 1,800 hives he started with last fall, just 320 survived the winter.
BRADSHAW: You know, it's like, what did I do wrong? I mean, I'm a very bad steward of my bees. You know, I just - it really hurts.
KLEIN: But this didn't just happen to Bradshaw. Starting in January, bee researcher Danielle Downey says beekeepers all over the country were calling bee scientists in a panic.
DANIELLE DOWNEY: So it was like the bees were slipping through their fingers in days.
KLEIN: Downey runs a nonprofit research organization called Project Apis m. It's named after a species of honey bee. Her group surveyed the majority of the nation's commercial beekeepers and found they lost an average of 62% of their hives just this winter.
DOWNEY: These are the highest losses ever recorded.
KLEIN: According to the USDA, for the past few decades, bees have struggled with what's called colony collapse disorder. Scientists haven't been able to identify a single cause. They say pesticides and a parasite known as Varroa mites could play a role. That disorder peaked around 20 years ago, but annual deaths of around 30% of commercial bees are still considered normal. So why so many more losses this year? Downey says they don't know yet.
DOWNEY: Is there potentially a new virus? There's resistance to the compounds that kill the mites. There's always a concern about pesticide exposures.
KLEIN: Government scientists are analyzing samples of bees, larvae and honey to try to figure out what happened. But Downey says the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce have slowed this work down.
DOWNEY: The USDA scientists that we work with on these things, who have been heroically showing up to help us in this crisis, they're in their own crisis watching their friends get fired and worried for their own jobs.
KLEIN: The USDA didn't answer questions about whether employees at its bee labs were fired but said in an emailed statement that scientists are working to identify the source of the die-offs.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEE SMOKER BELLOWING)
DUSTIN REEDER: This is a smoker, and smoke has a calming effect on the bees.
KLEIN: Dustin Reeder is a commercial beekeeper in Terra Bella, California. He's also a bee broker, trucking in bee boxes from all over the country to pollinate California almonds, then stone fruit. Some move on to Washington apples and canola flowers in North Dakota. Even with so many losses, Reeder says he has scrounged together all the bees his clients have needed so far, but the experience has been grueling.
REEDER: This year, I was working at least 20 hours a day. I was not able to come home at night. I stayed in my truck. And I'd get a few hours of sleep, and I'd keep going.
KLEIN: Farmers and trade organizations say it's too early to tell what these losses will mean for ag, but Project Apis m. estimates beekeepers are poised to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. For NPR News, I'm Kerry Klein in California's Central Valley.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIM ALLHOFF'S "STILLNESS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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