Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

DEPARTMENT OF DATA
Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?

Analysis by Andrew Van Dam
Staff writer
March 29, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Where in the unholy heck did all these bees come from?! ... After almost two decades of relentless colony collapse coverage and years of grieving suspiciously clean windshields, we were stunned to run the numbers on the new Census of Agriculture (otherwise known as that wonderful time every five years where the government counts all the llamas): America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high.

We’ve added almost a million bee colonies in the past five years. We now have 3.8 million, the census shows. Since 2007, the first census after alarming bee die-offs began in 2006, the honeybee has been the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country! And that doesn’t count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over.

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Howdy! The Department of Data seeks your quantitative queries. What are you curious about: Should we pay blood donors? When does spring really start? What’s the best time to get your flu shot? Just ask!

If your question inspires a column, we’ll send you an official Department of Data button and ID card. This week we owe one to ace news researcher Razzan Nakhlawi, who helped us track down several bee-data experts.

By Andrew Van Dam
Andrew Van Dam writes the Department of Data column each week for The Washington Post. He has covered economics and wrangled data and graphics for The Post and the Wall Street Journal. Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewvandam

[underpants]

1. I'd guess this is from an increase in backyard operations

I can’t read the WaPo article. We have a couple people in our neighborhood that have pretty robust bee setups.

[Goonch]

2. 👇👇👇👁️👁️

[getagrip_already]

3. Honey Bess are beeing managed by beekeepers...

They are not in imminent danger of collapse, although they are under constant pressure from parasites, pollution, toxins, and disease, with new threats on the horizon worse than any ever seen before.

Wild pollinators are fairing far worse.

Honey bees themselves have the super power of rapid reproduction. You think rabbits reproduce quickly, you ain't seen nuttin, honey.

Given the right resources and weather, you can split one colony into six, and then split each of those hives into two in one season. That's rare, and takes a lot of effort, but smaller splits are common, and drive the industry.

So while losses of 50% or more over a season and winter are common, the bees prolific breeding abilities make up for it.

So yeah, losses are horrific. That is true. But the industry is staying up with them. So far.

[usonian]

4. More:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240330232927/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/29/bees-boom-colony-collapse/

Excerpt:

“You wouldn’t be like, ‘Hey, birds are doing great. We’ve got a huge biomass of chickens!’ It’s kind of the same thing with honeybees,” she said. “They’re domesticated. They’re essentially livestock.”

Mace Vaughan leads pollinator and agricultural biodiversity at Xerces, an insect-conservation outfit that has grown from five to nearly 80 employees during his 24 years there. Vaughan says it’s not a zero-sum game: For native pollinators to win, honeybees don’t have to lose. If we focus not on tax breaks, but on limiting the use of insecticide and promoting habitats such as meadows, hedgerows and wetlands, all pollinators can come out ahead.

“We’ve got really well-meaning people who are keeping honeybees because, ‘Oh, I’ve got to save the bees.’ That’s not the way you save the bees!” Vaughan told us. “The way you support both honeybees and beekeepers — and the way you save native pollinators — is to go out there and create beautiful flower-rich habitat on your farm or your garden.”