A Tough Year for Honeybees

In the summer of 2016, a swarm of honeybees moved into the space below Ernie Cavallo’s deck.

Understanding the importance and value of honeybees, Cavallo didn’t grab a can of Raid or call a pest control company. The bees weren’t bothering him. On the contrary, he was happy to have them on his property. So fond of them, in fact, that when he needed to renovate his deck, he insisted on the work being done in the winter so as not to disturb the hive when the bees were active.

“They stayed to themselves, and I never bothered them,” he said. “I just enjoyed the constant buzz and watching them go in and out, pollinating the flowers.”

But this year, as April was getting on and he’d seen no sign of his bees, Cavallo grew concerned. “It suddenly struck me that they were gone, and it was like I had lost friends.”

Cavallo’s bees finally showed themselves on Easter Sunday, much to his delight. We did have an unusually cold winter, so it seems they just slept in a little later than normal.

But Cavallo’s happy ending is not a common one this year. All over the country, beekeepers are reporting massive colony die-offs. Even in a normal year, it’s become common to lose up to a third of bee colonies over the winter. Sometimes colonies are weakened by pests, like the Varroa mite. Sometimes a colony is weakened by pesticides or can’t find enough forage to store up adequate honey to get through the winter.

The more our communities are filled with perfect green lawns — no dandelions, no clover, no flowering shrubs — the less there is for the bees to forage on. And when they can’t store enough honey to hold them through the winter, they will starve to death. Beekeepers generally treat their bees for mites and feed them sugar water in the fall to boost the odds of survival, but it’s become more challenging every year as the above-mentioned threats multiply. On top of all that, climate change leads to generally warmer winters, which gets the bees moving around earlier — too soon to find much in bloom, but causing them to burn more calories, and need more food.

This spring, commercial beekeepers throughout the United States reported losing more than 60 percent of their hives over the winter, the largest loss of honeybee colonies since Apis mellifera was first brought over by European settlers in 1622.

Aside from the general heartbreak I get thinking about all that death, it doesn’t portend well for U.S. agriculture. American farmers truck in bees during pollination season for a multitude of crops, from almonds and apples to cotton and avocados. Without bees to pollinate the flowers, crop yields will plummet.

Chris Kelly, the owner of Promised Land Apiaries in Mattituck — and my own source for bees when mine don’t make it through the winter — said: “The loss rate is staggering nationwide, not just locally. For a little historical perspective, beekeeping losses prior to 1986 averaged 10 percent. In 1987 a parasitic mite named Varroa destructor was discovered in the U.S., and that has changed the course of beekeeping in every facet of hive management and decision-making.

“As the Varroa destructor mite has spread, mutated and grown, the winter loss rates have gone up to where a loss rate of more than 20 percent has become the new normal, and 2007-08 was the first year that a loss rate of over 50 percent was recorded. The influence of this pest has led to ‘in season’ hive losses,” he said. “I think the first recorded data on this is 2000. So now the beekeeper has two distinct seasons of hive loss.”

“I am deeply disturbed because this feels different,” Kelly said. “From personal observations of bees over 50 years, I feel like the bees are telling us something has changed, and they are not coping. For lack of a better phrase, we have stressed them out!

“How did we get here? I think it’s been a perfect storm of a devastating parasite, the loss of forage areas, and pesticides. In 2024, Suffolk County applied 6.5 million pounds of pesticides, the highest amount of any county in New York State.”

“If you have lived out on the East End for more than three years, you can’t help but see the change in the landscape as more and more houses are going up. Every house that goes up reduces the amount of forage for bees to feed on,” he added.

“In my beekeeping operation, we manage 46 locations numbering around 350 hives. They are located throughout Long Island, multiple locations in upstate New York and even some in South Carolina.”

This year, Kelly lost about 30 percent of his hives. Analysis showed the lowest losses were where bees had the best foraging areas. “Basically, a better food supply and lower hive density per acre equals better survival rates,” he said.

Depressing as this year’s losses have been, Kelly manages to remain optimistic. “Spring is here, and the hives left are humming, so I am always filled with hope for what is to come.”

Let’s all hope that Ernie Cavallo’s experience becomes the norm, not the exception.