Are the bees still dying? The scary truth behind the continuing ‘beepocalypse’ 

While the issue is less in the news cycle, many native bees are still on their way to extinction. And commercial honeybees are dying at rates that make the bee business difficult.

[Photos: akiyoko/Adobe Stock, Petra/Adobe Stock]

Twenty years ago, honeybees first started to disappear in mysteriously large numbers. Stories in the media were everywhere, as were solutions to try to save the bees. But today, you hear less about the crisis. Has it simply been drowned out by the constant hum of breaking world news, or is the bee crisis over?

There are some people who argue that we have “saved” the bees, while others say honeybees never needed saving in the first place. In truth, the problem hasn’t gone away.

“Our losses have been getting higher and higher over the last few years,” says Zac Browning, a fourth-generation beekeeper from North Dakota. This winter, he lost more than half of his bees. Nationwide, commercial beekeepers lost an average of 62% of their colonies last winter.

Honeybees may not need saving from extinction. But commercial beekeeping may one day no longer be economically sustainable—and the same environmental pressures facing managed bees are also pushing wild pollinators toward collapse.

The situation isn’t quite the same as it was in 2006, when beekeepers started reporting a strange new phenomenon: Adult bees were suddenly disappearing from their hives. That became known as colony collapse disorder. That specific scenario is rarer now, but scores of bees have been dying off every winter since then.

“We’re still seeing unsustainable losses,” says Christina Grozinger, an entomology professor at Penn State University. Over the last two decades, beekeepers have often lost up to 30% to 40% of their colonies over the winter, and that’s “very difficult for beekeepers to manage,” she says.

As previously mentioned, honeybees aren’t likely to go extinct. Beekeepers can manage their populations by “splitting” a hive to produce more bees, or by purchasing more bees when there’s a large loss. But it’s hard to keep going.

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol says the most underrated leadership skill is listening more and talking less

© Fast Company