Category Archives: Colony Collapse Disorder

More Bees, More Honey, and Higher Prices

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The USDA just released their latest honey report, and it was a banner year in 2010. Domestic honey production surged by 20% to 176 million pounds, and the number of producing honeybee colonies rose 7% to 2.68 million. Per colony yield was up 12% to 65.5 pounds (29.7 kg). Inventories grew, for the first time in a long time, to 45.3 million pounds (20.5 million kg) – a 21% increase – and the USDA’s “all honey” price climbed 9% to a record $1.603/lb.

Last regular post on CCD

Here we have another year – the fifth – that honeybees have not been wiped out, that US honey production did not plummet, and that US agriculture did not collapse because of Colony Collapse Disorder. It’s becoming a challenge to find different ways of saying that, and it’s becoming sillier every year to speak of extinction or “spring without honeybees.” So this may be my last regular post about CCD. It was first reported in 2006. I started writing about it the following year, and every year since. But going forward, I expect to write only if there is a significant development.

I’ve summarized production, colony count, and yield since 2005 (the last full year before Colony Collapse Disorder struck) in the table below.

US Honeybee Colonies And Honey Production
Year Production (millions) Producing Colonies Yield
2005 174 lb (79 kg) 2.41 million 72.4 lb (32.8 kg)
2006 155 lb (70 kg) 2.39 million 64.7 lb (29.3 kg)
2007 148 lb (67 kg) 2.44 million 60.8 lb (27.6 kg)
2008 161 lb (73 kg) 2.30 million 69.9 lb (31.7 kg)
2009 144 lb (65 kg) 2.46 million 58.5 lb (26.5 kg)
2010 176 lb (65 kg) 2.68 million 65.5 lb (29.7 kg)

Record honey prices in 2010

I still plan to track and report on honey prices. As mentioned earlier, the USDA reported that their “all honey” price set a record high last year, and that agrees with my own data. I keep track of the price of honey at Costco and honey packers that sell in bulk online. That gives me a good idea of what a mead maker would pay when buying honey in bulk. I’ll go over my spreadsheet and distill that into an article on honey prices.



Colony Collapse Disorder: Another reason for optimism

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The number of managed honeybee colonies in the United States rose to 2.46 million in 2009 (see the just-released USDA honey report). That’s more than in 2005, the last full year before CCD struck, and more than in 2006 when CCD was first reported. I’ve summarized USDA data on colony count, per-colony yield, and honey production in the table below.


US Honeybee Colonies And Honey Production
Year Production (millions) Producing Colonies Yield
2005 174 lb (79 kg) 2.41 million 72.4 lb (32.8 kg)
2006 155 lb (70 kg) 2.39 million 64.7 lb (29.3 kg)
2007 148 lb (67 kg) 2.44 million 60.8 lb (27.6 kg)
2008 161 lb (73 kg) 2.30 million 69.9 lb (31.7 kg)
2009 144 lb (65 kg) 2.46 million 58.5 lb (26.5 kg)

Colony Collapse Disorder is real, we don’t know what causes it or how to treat it, and it’s causing losses and hardship for beekeepers. But each passing year of stable colony counts, this is the fourth, is another reason for optimism that CCD is not threatening our honey supplies or pollination capacity. News media coverage seems to be moving away from the shrill cries of “disappearance” and “extinction”, as in this ABC report on the declining incidence and severity of CCD over the 2008/2009 winter.

I make a lot of mead and buy honey in bulk. I’d like to keep doing that, so I’ve been following the CCD phenomenon ever since I heard about it. I’m also interested in production and and the outlook for honey prices. From that perspective, the rest of the honey report is a good news/bad news story.

More honeybees but less honey in 2009

In 2008 we saw managed colonies decline, but per colony yield and total honey production rise. 2009 gave us a mirror image of that with the number of colonies rebounding but producing less honey. Much less. In fact per colony yield was the lowest since 1989 and total US honey production was the lowest ever. That’s the bad news. The good news is that lower production didn’t lead to higher prices.

Honey prices up a bit, inventories down a lot

Producer honey stocks fell to 37.2 million pounds (16.9 million kg), down from 50.4 million pounds (22.9 million kg)a year ago – a 27% decline. My own honey price survey showed no change in 2009, and the USDA’s “all honey” price was up 2% to 144.5.

Revisions of 2008 data

It looks like the USDA has revised some of it’s 2008 data this year. The all honey price was originally reported to be 141.0 in the 2008 honey report, but is said to have increased from 142.1 in the 2009 report. Also, the number of producing honeybee colonies was originally reported to be 2.30 million at the end of 2008, but are said to have risen by 5% to 2.46 million at the end of 2009. The USDA does not provide a new figure for the 2008 colony count, but 2.46 million is about 7% higher than 2.30 million. So it looks like honey prices rose more, and the colony count fell less, than first reported in 2008. Since the USDA was not explicit about all these revisions, I use the data as reported in my table. After all, the 5% figure or the 142.1 could have been typos.

Further reading

The ABC news story that I mentioned was based on A survey of honey bee colony losses in the United States, fall 2008 to spring 2009.



Colony Collapse Disorder: A nuisance, not a catastrophe

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CCD was first identified in 2006, and by the end of that year the number of producing colonies had fallen barely 1%. In 2007, beekeepers had increased their colonies by more than 2%, ending the year with more than in 2005 – the last year prior to the CCD outbreak. So this year’s 6% decline – see the USDA’s just released 2008 Honey Report – isn’t very alarming. If honeybees really were threatened with extinction, as some of the more shrill coverage suggests, we would have seen severe declines in 2006 and 2007. For some perspective, I’ve summarized USDA data going back to 2005 in the table below.


US Honeybee Colonies And Honey Production
Year Production (millions) Producing Colonies Yield
2005 174 lb (79 kg) 2.41 million 72.4 lb (32.8 kg)
2006 155 lb (70 kg) 2.39 million 64.7 lb (29.3 kg)
2007 148 lb (67 kg) 2.44 million 60.8 lb (27.6 kg)
2008 161 lb (73 kg) 2.30 million 69.9 lb (31.7 kg)

As long as CCD is still afflicting honeybee colonies (it is), and as long as we don’t know why (we don’t), then it’s a concern. But it’s no more worrying than the other difficulties facing bees and their keepers (disease, pests, weather, and so forth).

Fewer honeybees but more honey in 2008

The latest Honey Report paints a good news – bad news picture of 2008. While the number of producing honeybee colonies fell by 6% to 2.3 million, honey production rose 8% to 161 million pounds (73 million kg). Why did honey production increase when the number colonies fell? Because the honeybees were much more productive – yield per colony soared by 15% to 69.9 lb (31.7 kg).

Honey prices up, inventories down

Honey inventory has been falling for years, and 2008 was no exception. Producer honey stocks fell by 4% to 50.4 million pounds (22.9 million kg). If you make mead and buy honey, like I do, then you already know that honey prices surged last year. Now the USDA has put a number on it: The “all honey” price rose 31% to $1.41/lb. I don’t know what will happen to honey prices, but I’ll be keeping my eye on them. And publishing updated price reports as the year unfolds – watch for them.

Colony Collapse Disorder: No big deal?

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My “unprediction” lands close to the mark

Last May, I was trying to make sense of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and the effect it might have on honey prices. I started with the annual honey report for 2006 published by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistical Service. I combined that with what I knew about CCD, like the 25% loss of honeybee colonies, and a little optimism. That led me to a number, there were too many variables to call it a “prediction,” that I thought would be closest to US honey production in 2007. My number was -2.6%, which doesn’t sound all that great, but compared to the talk of honeybee extinction, followed by mankind’s demise three years later, it was positively giddy. The 2007 honey report just came out, and the actual number was -4%. Not a bad “unprediction,” if I do say so myself! Here’s what the rest of the report said:

Honey production down slightly in 2007

Honey production fell in the United States by 4% to 148 million pounds (about 67 million kg), honey stocks held by producers fell 13% to 52.5 million pounds(24 million kg), and the number of producing colonies rose 2% to 2.44 million. A higher number of colonies and lower production imply a lower yield per colony: 60.8 pounds (27.6 kg) compared to 64.7 pounds (29.4 kg) in 2006.

Number of honeybee colonies stable for two years

I’ve been wondering, since last May, if we’d see a large decline in managed honeybee colonies. The NASS report’s answer is very encouraging: After falling 1% in 2006 to 2.39 million, they rose 2% in 2007 to 2.44 million colonies. It’s as though CCD didn’t happen at all! It did happen, of course, and may still be happening right now. But if, in the teeth of CCD, the number of producing colonies remains stable for two years, then I think there’s reason for optimism. Beekeepers might be frantic, and under financial stress, and growers might be panicky, but I think the beekeeping industry is proving to be very resilient. I’m becoming increasingly confident that growers will have uninterrupted access to pollination services and meadmakers, like you and I, will have access to honey at good prices. We may even find that CCD fades away, just like virtually-identical die offs of the past, without us ever discovering the cause.

Update 3/9/2009: Honeybees hang in there for another year

The 2008 Honey Report indicated that managed colonies in the US fell by only 6%. Honey production and per colony yield rose. It’s looking more and more like Colony Collapse Disorder is not a catastrophe.

Colony Collapse Disorder: A clue

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I last wrote about Colony Collapse Disorder back in May. That’s when I made the case that CCD would not squeeze honey supplies too much and cause a large price run up. With honey prices up about 10% since then, I think my analysis was about right. I’m still anxious to learn about the impact on colonies this year, but I haven’t seen any good data on that. In fact, I hadn’t seen much in the way of new information at all until a few days ago.

Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus linked Colony Collapse Disorder

The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health announced a study linking CCD to Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. I haven’t found a link to the study itself, which is published in the journal Science, but ScienceDaily has published a summary. The authors of the study claim that the presence of IAPV predicts CCD in a colony with 96% accuracy. In other words, if someone selected a honey bee colony in the US and all they told you about it was whether or not it had IAPV, not how big it was, where it was, what kinds of bees they were, you could tell them if it had collapsed or not. If you did this 1000 times and had average luck, you’d be right 960 times.

But we don’t know if it actually causes CCD

That kind of accuracy is pretty amazing and makes IAPV a “significant marker” for CCD, but it doesn’t mean that it causes CCD. It might even be the other way around; CCD weakens a colony that was otherwise able to fend off IAPV, allowing the virus to infect the colony. Or something else causes both CCD and facilitates an IAPV infection.

Did IAPV come from Australia?

The study also fingered Australia as a possible source of IAPV because they found IAPV in Australian honeybees and live bee imports from Australia began close to the time that beekeepers started reporting CCD. It’s possible, but this strikes me as the weakest part of the study, and not just because we don’t really know if IAPV causes CCD. Finding IAPV in Australian bees isn’t the same thing as establishing that Australia was the source. Do we know for sure that the US was free of IAPV? Was Australia the only source of live bee imports that might have carried IAPV? To my knowledge, no and no.

Where do we go from here?

The next step for these researchers is to try and cause CCD. They’ll do this by introducing IAPV, by itself and in combination with other things that stress honeybees, into healthy colonies. The thinking is that if IAPV is the culprit, it’s not acting alone. One possible accomplice is the varroa mite, which already plagues honeybees. It’s known to suppress bees’ immune systems, so it could pave the way for IAPV to do it’s dirty work. If they can reliably cause CCD in this way, then IAPV could graduate from “significant marker” to “cause”. If not, well science has a lot more red herrings and blind alleys than it has breakthroughs. So we take what we learn from this, add it to what we already know, and keep moving forward.

Update 3/9/08: Beekeepers have staying power

The USDA’s 2007 honey report indicates that the number of producing honeybee colonies rose in 2007 by 2%. This is encouraging news and shows that beekeepers have been able to make up their losses from CCD for the second year in a row. Read more here.

Update 3/9/2009: Honeybees hang in there for another year

The 2008 Honey Report indicated that managed colonies in the US fell by only 6%. Honey production and per colony yield rose. It’s looking more and more like Colony Collapse Disorder is not a catastrophe.

Honey Prices: Getting more expensive

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Prices up 10%

Last month, and since the beginning of May, my local Costco sold 6 lb (about 2.7 kg) jugs of honey for $7.99. Those 6 lb jugs are now fetching $8.79, a 10% increase. I think Costco’s price for clover honey is a good indicator of honey prices in the US for three reasons: clover is the largest selling variety, Costco turns its inventory rapidly, and their margins are consistent. So changes in the wholesale market show up right away in Costco’s retail price. Here are other prices I keep an eye on:

Costco: $1.47/lb – $8.79 for a 6 lb jug
Sam’s Club: $1.53/lb – $7.64 for a 5 lb jug
Miller’s Honey (clover): $1.45/lb – $87 for a 60 lb pail – unchanged from May
Miller’s Honey (wildflower): $1.08/lb – $65 for a 60 lb pail – unchanged from May

To soon to say if it’s related to Colony Collapse Disorder

I’ve been keeping a close tab on prices ever since I heard about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the mysterious problem that has destroyed whole colonies of honey bees. I wrote here that I didn’t expect a supply squeeze from CCD, and I don’t have any new information about US honey production now. So I can’t say if we’re starting to see CCD affect honey prices or not. That 60 lb pail of wildflower form Miller’s looks tempting though.

Update 3/9/2009: Honeybees hang in there

The 2008 Honey Report indicates that managed colonies in the US fell by only 6%. Honey production and per colony yield rose. It’s looking more and more like Colony Collapse Disorder is not a catastrophe.

Still No Supply Squeeze From Colony Collapse Disorder

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My cherry wine is fermenting nicely. I plan to press it soon, and use the pomace to make a cherry mead. The good price on the cherries worked out really well, but it did leave me with a dilemma about the honey. Use the wildflower that I have? It would be much better in the beer-like mead that I’m planning. Order more wildflower, so I can use it anyway? That would mean I couldn’t try something new. My brilliant plan was to pop over to Costco. They’re selling clover honey in 6 lb cartons for $7.99. That’s a little higher than I remember it from last year, but at $1.33/lb it’s still a good price. As an aside, it means that there’s no sign of a spike in honey prices as a result of Colony Collapse Disorder. The season isn’t over yet, of course, and we don’t really know how CCD will play out, but I wrote back in May that I didn’t expect a honey supply squeeze. With no new information out since then, I’m still an optimist.

Honey Prices: Making sense of colony collapse disorder

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When I buy honey for mead, I do it in 5 gallon (60 lb) buckets. With last year’s dip in US honey production and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) wiping out honeybee colonies, I’m keeping a wary eye on prices. Predicting 2007 production and prices is as dicey as guessing the cause of CCD, so I’ll start with what we know about 2006.

The USDA reports that the number of colonies fell by 1% to 2.39 million, in 2006, and the yield per colony fell by 11% to 64.7 lb of honey. Total production fell by 11% to 155 million lb, and inventories held by producers fell by 3% to 60.5 million lb. We also know that US beekeepers have lost 25% of their colonies, recently, to CCD.

We could start with that 25% loss and forecast a 25% drop in production, on top of last year’s 11% drop, to 116 million lb. I think two things will push that number higher. First of all, beekeepers are trying to rebuild their colonies so even if they can’t fully recoup their losses, the number of producing colonies should be higher than 1.79 million. Last year’s production suffered from unfavorable weather, so if this is a more normal year then yield per colony should be higher. If we just use 2005’s figure of 72.4 lb of honey per colony, and use the 1.79 million colonies then we get almost 130 million lb. That’s more than a 15% drop, but it assumes that beekeepers are unable to rebuild their colonies at all. With researchers hard at work on CCD, I think that’s far too pessimistic. If beekeepers can replace half their losses (I’m just pulling that number out of thin air), then we’d have 2.09 million colonies. Using 2005 yields would give us 151 million lb of honey – just a 2.6% drop from 2006. There are too many variables to rely on the 151 million lb number (I won’t even call it a forecast), but I think it shows that a supply squeeze is not in the cards.

Beekeepers produce honey all over the world and I haven’t forgotten about them, I just know more about the US industry. CCD has struck Europe and South America, as well as 27 US states, but my sense is that the US has been hit harder than the rest of the world. If that’s so, then there will be even less pressure on prices this year.

I still might buy my honey early this year. After all, it’s hard to imagine prices falling much in this environment.

Update 5/16/07
Here’s my source for US honey industry information:

NASS Honey Report 2/28/07

The National Agricultural Statistics Service, part of the USDA, puts out this summery every year.

Update 8/8/07: Honey prices drift upward
Over the following three months, honey prices have risen modestly, so while I don’t have any information on this year’s production I remain confident in my analysis.

Update 3/9/08: US honeybee population rises despite Colony Collapse Disorder
The latest honey report shows producing honeybee colonies rose 2% in 2007, and honey production fell by 4% – not far at all from my -2.6% “unprediction!” Read more here.

Update 10/6/2008: Honey prices surge

I’ve heard many explainations, from poor crops in Brazil to a falling dollar, but whatever the cause, honey prices surged in the fall of 2008.

Update 1/12/2009: Honey prices keep rising

The advance in honey prices, that I first noticed in the fall of 2008, continues into early 2009.

Update 3/9/2009: Honeybees hang in there for another year

The 2008 Honey Report indicated that managed colonies in the US fell by only 6%. Honey production and per colony yield rose. It’s looking more and more like Colony Collapse Disorder is not a catastrophe.