Friday - October 30, 2009
Get Your Honey Now
US Honey Crop Worst EVERBee-leave me, this bad news really stings.
Twenty four years ago, before Varroa mites came to live here and before honey production was a major industry in several countries as an export market, the U.S. was producing something like 220 milion pounds a year, with hardly any honey imports at all. Of course back then, even a minor producing state like Ohio had 9,000 beekeepers. Last year, the U. S. produced only 160 million pounds, and Ohio had about 3,200 beekeepers. You can see the problem.
Last year the U.S. produced, by our estimate, about 61 pounds of honey for each of the 2.564 million colonies we figured were honey producers for a total of 156.4 million pounds of honey. USDA measured 161.1 million pounds. We’ve been that close since we started. I like our numbers better, but why quibble over a 3% difference.
So, this year our predictions are that 2.223 million colonies (down from last year because of colony losses to colony collapse disorder and last year’s poor honey crop) will produce 53.7 pounds of honey each, for a total of 119.37 million pounds of U. S. produced honey ... this is, friends, the worst honey crop ever. EVER!
The US consumes about 375 million pounds of honey each year, far more than we can produce. So honey is imported from Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and China. But the first 3 countries have had bad harvests this year too. And - gosh, I know this will come as a surprise, since nothing like it has ever happened before!! - honey imported from China is often tainted with pesticides and chemicals. And right now almost all the Chinese honey goes to Europe.
So the price of honey is going to skyrocket. So buy yours now, because there might not be any available at any price in the months to come.
The only good news is that more and more people are taking up beekeeping as a hobby, so there is more honey available at the very local, very small scale level.
Honeybees are responsible for about 75% of the crop germination pollination [thanks for the proofread Rich] in America. Without bees there won’t be a whole lot of food. The Varroa mite problem is being mitigated, but it hasn’t been eliminated. Foulbrood is well controlled, and there are solutions for the bee fungus Nosema Apis. But now beekeepers have another wrinkle in the mix, this CCD issue. CCD stands for Colony Collapse Disorder, a bee malady where the worker bees seem to just die off. Or fly off, without swarming and forming a new hive. Very un-bee-like behavior. Agricultural Science is working overtime trying to understand this malady; whether it’s tied to the bee virus IAPV or caused by any number of environmental factors. It may even be caused by the price of almonds!
Click on this pic for a bigger version of a detail rich cartoon that takes a humorous look at CCD research. Right down to a cat on a hot tin roof and “2 all bee patties, special sauce”. Love it!
other links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_the_honey_bee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder
http://www.betterbee.com/
http://blueskybeesupply.com
I had fun following the links on this one, and learned a bunch. Did you know that beehives can die in the winter if the bees can’t get out once in a while to fly around and poo? Did you know that bees are sold by the pound? Try that at your local Agway deli. Or that the core of a commercial hive is called a “nuc”? Or that honeybees, when encountering an object like a wall or a window, will always fly to the right to try and get around it? Or that beekeepers have a host of special tools, including a thin flexible crowbar called a hivetool, and an electric knife called an uncapping knife? Or that you can get bee games for your PC? (the trial version is a free-bee) It’s all bee-mewsing to me!
Posted by Drew458
on 10/30/2009 at 10:52 AM
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •
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