America’s Honeybee Population Buzzes to an All-Time High
Because of Bidenflation, bee hobbyists could be unfairly adding to the insect totals.
For years, we have followed stories related to “bee-pocalyse” and the “bee colony collapse” the eco-activists were blaming on climate change, GMOs, and pesticides.
Last fall, we reported that professional beekeepers were complaining. They warn that the threat of bee extinction has been wildly overstated. Eco-activists trying to fix a non-existent problem have hurt the environment by stifling biodiversity with their solutions.
Now it turns our nation’s honeybee population has buzzed 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.
Of course, climate cultists will look for ways to explain away anything that negates the narrative.
But skeptics of data from the new Census of Agriculture told The Washington Post that inflation and the murky definition of what is really considered a bee colony in the first place mean the buzz over the bee population could be overstated. The annual honey report actually shows a dip in colonies in the U.S., and “the census shows the number of operations with any bee colonies has ascended far faster than honey production or bee-colony counts — about 160 percent since 2007.”
Because of Bidenflation, bee hobbyists could be unfairly adding to those numbers.
Inflation might be making bee populations look artificially high. The census measures operations that produce at least $1,000 of products per year — so high honey prices could nudge some hobbyists into the count.
And a recent Washington State University study assert bees were working themselves to death….because of climate change.
One of nature’s most important keystone species is working itself to death.
Colonies of honey bees — crucial pollinators for a wide variety of plants and cash crops — are at risk of collapse because of climate change, a recent study by scientists at Washington State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found.
Long and warmer fall months across the Pacific Northwest encourage bees to emerge from their colonies when they should be resting, said Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, a research leader at the USDA’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona.
“When it’s warm out, they fly and when they fly they’re physiologically aging,” said DeGrandi-Hoffman, who is also one of the study’s authors. “It’s very taxing to fly.”
The Earth’s climate has changed over its entire history. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. But since the life began on the planet. 99% of species have gone extinct.
If bees are that fragile, then they won’t last. But, they have been around for 120 million years already. They survive the extinction level event that wiped out the dinosaurs. Personally, I like their chances.
Clearly, someone should introduce Washington State researchers to Darwin and evolution….unless it’s not allowed, because of “patriarchy.”
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The complaint now is that they’re not native bees. They’re being driven out by imports.
The native (feral) bees are just fine. Less disease and adapted. They will be less mild mannered than the European Italians. Now as for Africanized bees…. thank you Brazil.
A fun site extols the benefits of horizontal hives and using local bees rather than buying them I value the honey I get from friends. Trying to get them to try the horizontal hive and local bees…. I had a natural bee hive near the house…. wintered over fine.
How can this be? The climate cultists have told me that human activity has been killing the bees which will cause catastrophe. BartE aka Fatkins aka marx111 has some explaining to do.
Doing jobs that native bees won’t do?
Sweet🐝🍯
lol I was just reading an article that in California, as I recall, someone has been stealing bee hives!
Imagine doing that!
They roll in late night and steal 50-200-300 supers – we’re talking big money. Other thieves steal huge containers full of English walnuts straight out of orchard staging points. THAT is big money. Hulling firms began requiring proofs before accepting consignments.
It’s like cattle rustling.
Wow
If it’s not nailed down…
In many states cattle rustling will get you shot, as it should.
When I was a teen farms used rock salt in shotguns to discourage theft, A ng friend of mine learned this the hard way, caught a load in his backside, I was glad that I didn’t join him in trying to filch a pumpkin. We both learned something from the experience.
Have they tried branding their nuts?
Ouch
Bees are overwhelmingly female. Male bees are a tiny and persecuted minority, tolerated only for as long as they’re needed and then killed off.
Climate change has nothing to do with bees. There are bee keepers from Texas to Ontario. Now Bidenomic inflation has dramatically increased the cost of sugar to feed them. I cruise through Walmart frequently to check sugar prices. All my hives made it through the winter, climate change my @$$
One beekeeper friend and son maintain 40 supers. His bees stay local for almond pollination. He thinks colony collapse is triggered when moving bees up and down the coast in interstate fashion – in this case – California, Oregon and Washington. He’s got no proof that – just a hunch. He’s more concerned about wax or broodmoth than some mysterious colony disease.
He told me that crops like cranberry physically wear bees out, while bees simply love buzzing around fruit and nut orchards. A strong, dry, north wind can make the a hive irritable and cranky.
Fun fact: A local brewery sells its empty hop jute bail bags for use in bee smokers. The bails are huge.
Mmmm smoked bees….delicious
crunchy LOL
Bees are a menace.
Last year, a few too many times I came to realize the wine and the light were both gone, and I’d just spent some number of hours in my Adirondack chair out back, watching the bees in my herb bed.
This will be my second year with the back yard oasis, now upgraded to 2.0. I don’t know whether to wish for more self-control, or less.
Bees are officially a menace.
Having solved all other problems, just last year the NYS DoT demanded removal of some hives setup along a community garden, on homestead lots the overlords had claimed a couple decades ago, cleared, then left fallow.
It turns out that the garden project had been sponsored n supported for years by the city, county, and various development orgs, until The State of New York took note. The DoT. Not a road, shoulder, grade or maintenance access to same. “Nope, you need our permission on this land we claimed then did nothing with. We’re not doing what it was eminent domained for, but it’s still ours. You think these other jurisdictions matter? You’re so cute.”
So, the year-old expansion into the vast space of uncleared weeds across the road was dismantled, leveled, tilled under, harrowed, and seeded by a convoy of heavy equipment that could have built the pyramids in under a week. At the same time, the gardening group got a heads’ up: “Hey, nice community garden you have there. You know, we’ve had some complaints about the bees. Would be a shame if we had to come clean your whole thing up, like we just did that expansion. Get those stinger-jockeys out of there, or we might have to take care of the menace ourselves.”
Nothing like a little example of what could happen to get you to play along.. I wonder if somebody will pick up that tactic more broadly.
We need them
The woke response is to destroy all bees. Since they reside in colonies they are natural colonialists; therefore decolonization is mandatory.
I have neighbors who have hives that they don’t report to the State government, so the State sent somebody out to check on them. He parked on my my land. I walked over for a chat and told him that, if there were bees, we need more of them, and no, the ones we get aren’t fierce.
Of greater concern is that WASPS are dying out in this country, and are being replaced by destructive, invasive species.
I got started with gardening about the time that colony collapse had entered mainstream consciousness. So I grew (and still grow) a lot of flowers. I love gardening. But boy was I taken.
That’s such an amazing statistic. If there is life on other planets, this would go a a LONG way towards explaining why we’ve never been visited by other sentient creatures. Evolution is unforgiving. The reality is the vast majority of species simply don’t have a very long tree of life particularly relative to the age of the planet, solar system and universe.
Horseshoe crabs survived the extinction of the dinosaurs unchanged.
Coelacanth fish as well.
So maybe 100 million years
Modern Humans have made it maybe 200,000 years.
Neanderthals existed for 250,000