Bees and Food: What's killing billions of bees?
62% of U.S. honeybee colonies died this year. Here's what’s driving this crisis - and how you can take action.
Dear Climate Culinarians,
I have a confession to make: I am squeamish. That will become obvious when my conversation with beekeeper Derek Shenefield turns to baby bees. He calls them by their real name, of course: larvae. Let’s just say I was glad I did some classic armchair journalism here, calling the beekeeper on the phone.
I wonder about how to save bees, and Shenefield helps me look at the big picture. Like he did in part 1, when I tried to understand why most American beekeepers truck their hives to California’s almond blossom. In this newsletter, you will read about
how scientists try to understand why honeybees die in droves,
what kills and stresses bees (and beekeepers),
what a beekeeper’s relationship to queen bees looks like,
and what kind of action you can take to help save bees.
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How life (and death) in honeybee colonies has changed
Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are fascinating creatures. A beehive contains a single queen and thousands of worker bees. They tend to the hive’s honeycomb. They fly out to pretty flowers and bring back pollen and nectar. They even tell each other where to find the best food. Worker bees dance, too. That’s how they communicate. It sounds like a foodie paradise. But not all is well within the hives.
Derek Shenefield observes a troubling trend. Like most commercial beekeepers, he offers pollination services and trucks his hives to California’s almond blossom. Back in Indiana, he has to check which hives are still alive.
“It’s quite common for commercial beekeepers to lose 20, 25, 30 percent, just due to the environment that we live in these days”, he says. Just imagine that beekeepers used to fret over a loss of a few percent! And this year seems so much worse.
Between June 2024 and January 2025, 62 percent of commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died, according to Project Apis m. The nonprofit beekeeping research organization surveys 234 beekeepers across the country on an ongoing basis. Their latest number of dead hives is “potentially the largest loss in U.S. history”, says Cornell University entomologist Scott McArt (read more at the New Scientist).
Shenefield’s grandfather had a vastly different experience. “When he was doing bees, they didn’t even have mites in those days, so you just made a beehive and it lived forever, pretty much.” Shenefield says that even when his father took over Clover Blossom Honey, a queen bee would still live five to seven years. Today, the maximum is three years, if you’re lucky. “So their lifespan in the last 20 years has been cut in half”, says Shenefield.
The quest for answers: What’s causing massive bee die-offs?
Researchers at the Bee Research Laboratory at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s facility in Maryland are scrambling to find ways to understand and stop honeybee die-offs. They looked into the most recent mass bee death. Preliminary results point the blame towards varroa mites.
These parasites can carry viruses that are deadly to bees. So they are a prime suspect. However, the researchers have not examined any other potential culprits. Not for a lack of contenders.
Due to staffing cuts and cost, USDA researchers were unable to test for traces of pesticides. Even though neonicotinoids – often called neonics –are under investigation for wiping out pollinator populations.
Farmers spread these toxins on their fields. People use neonics on garden beds, lawns, even dogs, to get rid of certain insects. But neonics kill them all. Aphids and ticks, earthworms and bees.
Were neonics behind this year’s bee die-off? Bee experts from Cornell University picked up the task to test the USDA’s dead honeybee samples for pesticides, but the results aren’t in yet. And bee killers aren’t the only problem.
Why bees can’t thrive just anywhere
With about 3000 beehives, Shenefield’s apiary (that’s what a commercial beekeeping business is called) is the largest in Indiana. Compared to industry leaders, it’s small. “Some of the guys out west around the Dakotas and Montana, they could have up to 50,000 or 60,000 hives”, Shenefield says. An apiary’s size does not depend on business decisions, however.
Beekeeping’s defining factor is habitat.
You can only sell honey if your bees produce more than they need to survive. That requires a place where honeybees find lots of nectar and pollen.
The United States landscape is dotted with large cities and their expanding suburbs, especially in the East. Forests have been cut down, open grass lands have turned into housing additions, says Shenefield. This landscape lacks trees, shrubs, and flowers to make honeybees dance.
In some cities, honeybee lovers have created a new problem: too many hives, too close to each other. This density forces bees to compete for too little food. Some beekeepers supplement their beehives with sugar syrup. Wild bee species starve.
While about 40 percent of the U.S. is farmland, bees won’t necessarily find food there, either.
Monoculture farming literally stops the buzz. Miles and miles of the same type of plant only bloom for so long. After that, the bees have nothing to move on to.
To restart the buzz, some farmers introduce pollinator strips, also known as prairie strips: They interrupt their one-crop fields and plant strips with many different wildflowers and grasses (here’s an NBC video of what that looks like).
Beekeepers know that shipping their hives into blooming vegetable fields or orchards doesn’t exactly help their bees. “It’s hard on bees to stick them into a large pollination contract where they are basically forced to work on one crop at a time”, says Shenefield. “That kind of hurts their diet.” Imagine how you’d feel after eating nothing but potatoes for weeks. Shenefield thinks that his industry’s focus on mite treatments as a solution for bee health issues is misguided. The attention should go to bee nutrition.
According to Shenefield, plants in the cooler North produce a little more nectar than in the South. But from a honeybee’s perspective, the West ist the best. “The West is not very modernized, not very civilized, really. There are no big cities, and a lot of Native lands”, Shenefield says. “So there are a lot of nectar producing plants out there.”
For the love of queen bees
The beekeeper does not only sell honey and rent out his hives for pollination services. He also raises queen bees. This way, he can control a new hive’s heritage. He tries to improve its gene pool, selecting for bees he hopes will be more resistant to viruses and other issues. He can also make up for losses, because with a queen bee, you can start a new hive. That’s why other beekeepers buy queen bees from him, too.
“I have a hard time selling them”, says Shenefield. I remember where I’ve heard that before: from a farmer who drives his pigs to the slaughterhouse. Just like pigs in a pen, dairy cows in a barn, or chicken in a backyard, honeybees are domesticated livestock. They are the rare insect that people want to have closeby, and even love and care for.
“From the very first days of them being a larvae, to see them get mated and come back and start laying, I can get pretty attached to them”, the beekeeper says about his queen bees. I find it hard to relate. I happily celebrate how important insects are, I marvel at what they do. I also flinch at the mere thought of a caterpillar crawling across my arm. Yet here I am, trying to comprehend a fondness for bee larvae.
Then I ask how many queen bees Shenefield raises per season. Between 2,000 and 4,000, he says, depending on how many of his hives died. Getting attached to thousands of queen bees? I’m at a loss, and I say so.
“It’s just that first, you know, the first glance, love at first sight”, Shenefield explains.
Only later do I realize: Neither the number of queen bees nor my squeamishness towards insect babies caused my bewilderment. It’s rooted in the nature of love. Unconditional love does not expect anything in return. Not even cuteness. Love has no reason.
Therefore, it’s impossible to grasp – let alone explain – why someone loves whom (or what) they love. That’s what makes love stories appealing, even though you’d think you know them all. Except for the one with 4,000 queen bees, perhaps.
Take action: Help save the bees
Let’s start with what will not save bees: getting your own beehive.
Endangered bees live in the wild. That’s why biologist – and beekeeper! – Samantha Alger at the Vermont Bee Lab cautions that you won’t help bees by becoming a beekeeper: “It’s like wanting to do something for bird conservation and becoming a chicken farmer.”
That said: I’m happy for everyone who has taken to beekeeping as a hobby or a profession - it sure is fascinating. Rest assured that most actions to help wild bees will help your honeybees, too.
Grow flowers. Feed the bees! Even a windowbox or street tree bed turned into a pocket meadow will help them. You can find great pollinator plants and basic instructions here and here.
Look beyond the honeybee. Learn about the different pollinator insects! Xerces Society offers a great overview.
Become a bee detective aka community scientist. Participate in projects like Bumble Bee Watch. Or join the global pollinator watch on iNaturalist. Then show your friends what you found!
Support bee-friendly spaces. Volunteer, donate to or advocate for organizations that maintain bee habitat and pollinator gardens, like nature preserves and parks.
Advocate for biodiversity. Ask your town, school, church or workplace to plant pollinator gardens instead of lawns or ornamental plants low on nectar/pollen. Many states have introduced laws to protect pollinator habitat – if yours hasn’t, call your representatives.
If you have a yard
Create diversity. Try to grow many different plants – including trees and shrubs – that blossom at different times of the year. Plants native to your area are best. Start small with a native plant/pollinator garden or a pocket wildflower meadow.
Avoid pesticides. Attract beneficial insects instead. If you can’t or won’t stop using chemicals to treat your plants, look into integrated pest management. It’s a system that helps you use the least hazardous options for bees. Then tell your neighbors about your experiments!
Provide nest sites for wild bees. The overwhelming majority of wild bees in the U.S. nests in the ground. Skip the mulch on a few spots, so bees have access to bare ground. Skip the garden shears and leave spent stems alone for those bees who nest in hollow spaces. Plus: Fallen leaves provide extra space where bumble bee queens and other pollinators can find refuge to overwinter. Bonus: less gardening chores!
Attract not only pollinators, but humans, too. Many environmental organizations provide “pollinator habitat” signs, along with guidelines. Follow them and then place the sign outside. Have a garden party and give your friends a tour of the pollinator paradise you created.
Before I sign off, I want to give the stage to Derek Shenefield one more time. When we parted, I asked him what he would like everyone to know about bees. Here’s what he said:
“I just wish people would understand the importance of the honeybee outside of honey. The pollination services that they provide to the whole entire world are extremely important.”
Okay, time to move on. Who wants to put their feet up and engross themselves in a book? Next week, I’ll send you my recommendations, one of which will include the type of bee experience nobody has ever … nope, you gotta wait and read.
Eat, read, repeat!
Petrina
Climate Culinarians is a project by me, Petrina Engelke. I write about climate and food, and I help other writers turn their ideas into a book people want to read. In other words: I’m a journalist and a book coach. Read more about this newsletter & me here.