The beekeeping industry in the United States
is so diverse that characterizations are difficult;
however, some generalizations can be made.
In terms of numbers of colonies* and involvement in beekeeping as a profit-making enterprise, the range of beekeepers runs from hobbyists with one or two colonies in a backyard or "out at the farm," to sideliners operating up to 500 colonies to bring in a second income, to commercial operators with thousands of colonies and several employees on their payrolls.
The "typical" commercial beekeeper, for whom beekeeping is the main source of income, operates 1,500 to 2,500 colonies and has full time employees and additional harvest-time help.
Depending on the area of the country and other factors, a colony of bees will produce 80 to 120 pounds of surplus (harvestable) honey in an average year. To the beekeeper, the value of raw honey is about 80 cents per pound, up from 50 cents in 1994.
Currently, about 2.4 million colonies of bees in the United States produce about 210 million pounds of honey in any given year. Consumption is about 275 million pounds.
Those commercial beekeepers toward the small end of the scale often augment their honey production revenues by processing and packing their own honey and sometimes buying small lots of honey from other producers. However, since honey in the super-market is essentially identical to the honey from the beehive, there is little value added mark up in honey processing, perhaps on the order of 10 to 20 percent. At one time, all honey was packed by the beekeepers who produced it. In recent years, especially since World War 11, the industry has seen more specialization, with producers attempting to increase their revenues by operating more colonies and selling their production to firms specializing in packing honey.
Beekeepers move their colonies into areas where crops requiring honey bee pollination are growing and rent their colonies out for this purpose. For a crop's 6-week period of bloom, a beekeeper may be paid $30 - $50 per colony depending on the crop. During the weeks the bees are on a crop for pollination, they don't usually produce surplus honey, and, while the bees are in the fields pollinating, they may be damaged by pesticides applied for insect pests. According to a Cornell University study, honey bee pollination adds $10.7 billion to the value of the crops they pollinate. One-third of the total U.S. diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants.
Of course, all foraging honey bees pollinate plants as part of their life cycle, whether the intent of the beekeeper is to produce honey or pollinate crops. As bees fly from blossom to blossom, whether gathering pollen or nectar, the pollen they pick up at one plant brushes off on the next, fulfilling the bees role in the cross pollination of the plants.
Few, if any, beekeepers operate in areas where they could survive off pollination fees alone. Many beekeepers do not engage in for-hire pollination, never-the-less their bees are busy pollinating legumes, wild flowers, and trees. The benefit of this "free" pollination - to marginal crops, to pastures, to the environment, and the home gardens - is as great as the measured benefits for major crops.
[Editor's note: Pollination is also the way of life for many more organisms that help support our lives...see OpEd article by Gary Paul Nabhan]
Beekeepers have always sought ways to move their bees from one crop to the next, to maximize their return on their investment. Although the practice dates back to the turn of the century, when beehives were shipped by rail, migratory beekeeping came into its own in the United States with the completion of the Interstate highway system and the availability of reliable, high-speed trucks.
By one estimate, 630,000 colony equivalents (some colonies are moved more than one time) are moved interstate each year on five major migratory pathways: California to Northwest and Upper Midwest, Texas to Upper Midwest, Texas to California, Midwest to California, Florida to Upper Midwest, and Florida to Northeast. Additional colonies are moved along less popular pathways and intrastate. Hives with the bees in place are loaded onto flatbed trucks. Usually, the entire load is screened to keep the bees from escaping en route.
Colonies are moved from one pollination assignment to another, from one honey crop to another, and from honey production to pollination and vice versa.
Some beekeepers derive a portion of their income from the sale of bees themselves. They breed queen bees, which should be replaced annually in honey production colonies, and they sell package bees for beekeepers to use in restocking after winter losses or to increase their colony numbers. Queen and package bee breeders are concentrated in areas where spring occurs early - Hawaii, California, and the Southeast. A queen bee sells for $8-10 in the spring, a package of bees to restock a hive sells for as much as $50 incl. postage. U.S. bee breeders have suffered loss of business in recent years. When parasitic mites were first found in U.S. bees in the mid-1980s, bee breeders lost sales to Canada and other export markets. Also, some domestic producers reduced their bee purchases in fear of buying mite-infested bees. Now, the Africanized bees are moving into the primary bee-breeding areas, further complicating the breeders' operations.
Most beekeepers live in small towns and rural areas, since urban areas provide little in the way of bee pasture and apiary locations. In some small towns, the local commercial beekeeper is the largest employer and most visible commercial enterprise. As such, beekeepers are vital parts of the economy and lifestyle in many communities.
The number of U.S. beekeepers and bee colonies have been generally declining since 1947. The shift of the country to an industrial economy and the loss of land to subdivisions and highways accounted for the decline in earlier years. This decline has accelerated in recent years due to price competition from imports and complications from the spread of the parasitic mites. These two factors have put many U.S. beekeepers out of business.
In 1976, a study by the U.S. International Trade Commission found there were about 212,000 U.S. beekeepers, distributed as follows:
Hobbyists 200,000 Less than 25 colonies each
Sideliners 10,000 From 25 to 299 colonies each
Commercial 2,000 300 colonies or more each
In 1991, an intensive survey by Bee Culture magazine determined that this number had dwindled to 139,000. A year later, the trade journal found the population of U.S. beekeepers had dropped even further to 125,000. The approximately 600 beekeepers who operate 1,000 or more colonies each produce about 75 percent of the U.S. honey crop.
There are beekeepers - from hobbyists to commercial - in every state. The most lucrative areas for honey production are Florida, Texas, California, and the Upper Midwest. For paid pollination, the main areas are California, the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes States, and the Northeast.
TOP HONEY-PRODUCING STATES** TOP BEEKEEPING STATES
(Production in millions of lbs.) (Thousands of colonies)
1. California 31.5 1. California 470
2. Florida 22.9 2. North Dakota 240
3. North Dakota 21.8 3. South Dakota 240
4. South Dakota 20.4 4. Florida 220
5. Minnesota 17.1 5. Minnesota 190
6. Texas 10.6 6. Idaho 135
7. Montana 9.6 7. Texas 125
8. Nebraska 7.2 8. Wisconsin 105
9. Wisconsin 6.9 9. Nebraska 96
10. Idaho 6.9 10. Michigan 95
Total 1992 U.S. Honey Total 1992 U.S. Colony
Production.........220.7m lbs Count..............3.03 m
Since tracheal mites were discovered in U.S. bees in 1984 and varroa mites in 1987, U.S. beekeepers have experienced loss of production and increased costs. Individual colonies produce less honey when infested by the mites, and beekeeping operations are less productive due to deaths of colonies. In addition some normal beekeeping operations have been curtailed to help prevent the spread of mites to uninfested areas. Treating parasitic mites is a costly proposition; the chemicals and labor together can amount to $10-12 per colony, equating to perhaps 20 percent of the value of honey produced.
Beekeepers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas are facing the problems of Africanized bees first hand, and other U.S. beekeepers are feeling the effects as well.
As an area becomes Africanized, beekeepers' management problems multiply. Queens must be replaced more frequently. Apiary sites are more difficult to obtain as landowners shy away from having bees on their property. Some local governments are considering bans on keeping bees within their jurisdictions. Public relations becomes a priority. Labor costs escalate.
Even in areas which will not be invaded by Africanized bees for several years, if ever, beekeepers are facing public relations and landowner problems.
Research into possible solutions to beekeepers' pest and disease problems is conducted at four locations by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (Tucson, AZ; Baton Rouge, LA; Beltsville, MD; and Weslaco, TX) with annual expenditures of about $5 million. In addition, several state universities have bee research programs.
The top research priorities of the industry are the parasitic mites and Africanized bees. Different aspects of these problems are being studied at most of the research institutions. For the mites, short term solutions are better chemical treatments; long term solutions seems to lie with research on colony management strategies and genetics. Likewise, management and genetics likely hold the long term solutions to the Africanized bee problem. About a two dozen states have extension specialists who dedicate a portion of their time to beekeeping.
In the mid-1970s, the declining U.S. honey production and the expanding U.S. population crossed paths, and the United States has been a net importer of honey ever since. Once viewed as necessary to maintain customers when domestic honey supply was short, imports and the threat of further imports grew to the point that they unduly depressed the domestic honey market.
U.S. honey imports, particularly imports from China, increased dramatically in recent years at prices far below domestic prices. Trade restrictions on Chinese honey, imposed in 1995, have returned balance to the honey market.
In the early 1980s, the beekeeping industry realized that it needed a unified, well-funded marketing effort. The result was the passage of the Honey Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information Act of 1984 and the formation of the National Honey Board, which began operations in 1987.
The National Honey Board is funded by the honey industry with a 1-cent per pound assessment on all honey produced in the United States and imported from abroad. This is one of the largest assessments, as a percentage of value, levied by any of the commodity research and promotion boards.
The Honey Board is composed of 13 members named by the Secretary of Agriculture upon the recommendation of the industry: 7 producer members from geographical districts, 2 handler (packer) members, 2 importer/exporter members; a cooperative representative, and a public representative.
With an annual budget which now amounts to about $3 million, the Honey Board conducts generic honey research, advertising, and promotion. The efforts of the Honey Board are credited for the reversal of a downward trend in U.S. honey consumption. When the Honey Board was approved in 1986, total U.S. honey consumption was about 250 million pounds; in 1992, honey use broke the 300-million-pound mark.
Through the Market Promotion Program, established in the 1990 farm Bill, the Honey Board is working to expand markets for U.S. honey abroad. Under this program, the U.S. government shares the cost with the Honey Board and private honey exporters. This program helps U.S. honey producers to competitively market their products abroad.
*Strictly speaking, "colony" refers to the bees themselves, while "hive" is the man-made structure in which the colony lives and stores its honey; however, beekeepers sometimes use the terms interchangeably.
**
Derived from the 1992 honey production report by USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, February 1993. Only colonies held by owners of five or more colonies are included. Numbers of colonies have steadily declined since 1992 to a 1996 estimate of 1.8 to 2.4 million.
The American Beekeeping Federation is a 1,500-member national trade association representing honey producers, pollinators, queen and package bee shippers, and beekeeping hobbyists, and others involved in the bee and honey industry. There are Federation members in every state. It serves as a contact point for the industry with government, the news media, and other national organizations.
American Beekeeping Federation, Inc. P.O. Box 1038 Jesup, GA 31545 Ph. and Fax: 912-427-8447 (same line)
The American Honey Producers Association is a national organization of beekeepers - commercial, sideliner and hobbyist. All segments of the industry are welcome as members, but the voting rights lie with the beekeeper membership. The A.H.P.A. is actively involved in apiculture research, price support programs which include anti-dumping and disaster, and the dissemination of information valuable to the profit motivated beekeeper.
American Honey Producers Association Rt 3 Box 258 Alvin, TX 77511 Ph. 713-992-0802 Fax 713-996-9484
The National Honey Board operates under the auspices of the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. It promotes honey with industry- provided funds.
National Honey Board 421 - 21st Ave., Suite 203 Longmont, CO 80501 Ph. 303-776-2337 Fax: 303-776-1177.
Other sources of beekeeping information are the departments of agriculture and beekeepers associations in the various states and the entomology departments in state land grant colleges. In a given county, the Extension Service agricultural agent is the best source of local beekeeping contacts. Statistical information is available from the
National Agricultural Statistics Service United States Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C.
To subscribe to NASS reports or to order single copies call toll free, 1-800-999-6779 (weekdays 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. ET). You may write [to]
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