[Bonus] BTP Short - Unusually High Winter Bee Losses!

[Bonus] BTP Short - Unusually High Winter Bee Losses!

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast shorts, your quick dive into the latest buzz in beekeeping.

Becky Masterman: In 20 minutes or less, we'll bring you one important story, keeping you informed and up-to-date.

Jeff: No fluff, no fillers, just the news you need.

Becky: Brought to you by Betterbee, your partners in better beekeeping.

Jeff: Hey, everybody, welcome to this special Beekeeping Today Podcast shorts, the very first one of our current events podcasts that we want to start having on an occasional basis. This week, we want to invite Humberto Boncristiani to the show to talk about his latest episode on In The Hive TV about this collapse. Can I dare say collapse, that some of the commercial beekeepers are seeing with their overwintered bees?

Humberto Boncristiani: Well, a lot of things going on, Jeff. It's hard to say what's going on exactly right now in a beekeeping industry with the animal that suffer from many different directions, so many different variables in the game is a very easy opportunity for everybody to bring opinions, guessing, and companies to bring scams. I think my message right now is to keep looking, keeping analyzing, keep listening to the people that you trust, and keep collecting data. Don't go one direction without proper considerations.

Becky: Humberto, this brings back memories for you, doesn't it?

Humberto: Oh, yes.

Becky: If there are losses, you have a history with colony loss, don't you?

Humberto: Yes. Colony collapse disorder was the thing that brought me to United States almost 20 years ago. The USDA was looking for a virologist that have background in beekeeping. Apparently, I was the only guy on the planet.

[laughter]

Humberto: They found and they brought me in and that was a great thing that happened. At that time, the big guy was the IAPV, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. I come in, I was introduced to the USDA Beltsville Lab, very prestigious lab in United States at the USDA, and I start my career as a honeybee researcher there. I spent two years of my life dissecting bees and trying to find something on colony collapse disorder's samples.

I could see from the very beginning this whole wave of-- how can we put this? When events like that happen and reach the media, and reach the people's mind, the people that doesn't work in the field, and there is so many opportunities for everybody to say whatever they want, it creates a big problem to find reliable data. I spent two years of my life dissecting bees. I couldn't find much things going on with those bees.

We found some viruses, but nothing that really striked to the point that I think after so many millions of dollars is spent, and all the researchers got together, and years of research, they end up with that phrase that nobody liked, like, "This is a multifactorial thing. We don't know exactly," and then people are upset, "But we invest so much money, we don't know what happened, blah, blah, blah." Yes, it is hard and that's the way it works, unfortunately.

In this case, I think we got some lessons from the last time that we should perhaps keep paying attention. What we know right now is there is a big event, a big die-off. How big? People are still working on that. How impactful? People are still working on that. Now it's going to reach the point that everybody's going to bring their opinions, everybody is going to have their voices, everybody's going to have their ideas and biases.

That's something that I teach to my students, how to identify biases, weight, analyze, and then move the directions, and if the direction is not right, know how to bring yourself back and get another pathway to follow. What do you guys want me to talk specifically here? Because I still learning from that.

Becky: Well, I know that you had a long conversation, and we will link to it in the show with Blake Shook. Can you share with us some of the things that Blake shared with you?

Humberto: Yes.

Becky: I'm just curious, did Blake reach out to you or did you reach out to Blake?

Humberto: Well, I become a private consultant for the beekeeping industry now, so I am working with commercial beekeepers and companies on a regular basis. I am monitoring a lot of things, a lot of the talks. I'm all always over the phone with many different people. I was aware there was something going on in California. I was aware there was-- I know researchers that was collecting samples, but that happens all the time, every time here in United States. I don't know if people at home knows.

There is always something going on and people are trying to figure it out, but this one apparently was bigger than normal. There is always die-offs here and there. This one apparently would hit the spot and people got extra concerned. I knew that the USDA were working really hard and timely, going to places, collecting samples, doing the work they're supposed to be doing, which is great, and then I start to investigate because this is part of my job.

I need to be in front of the problems to see if I can help the commercial beekeepers that I helped and then companies to bring solutions or if somebody have some value that I know, so now is the time to show your value. I was aware something was going on, but then there is-- this is the part that I was intrigued. Apparently, this is what's happening about two, three, or a month ago or more. I said, "How only now people start talking about that?" It was so big.

Apparently, there was people holding information like, oh, because-- I'm not going to say names, holding information just because they want to be the ones that do the job or look good. At the moment that I knew the thing, I called a beekeeper-- first, the beekeeper that come to me and said, "Who wants to come live?" Because that's the way it's supposed to be doing things. I'm not going to be wholly, "Oh, but we don't have authorization to do this, Humberto, there is a press release, blah, blah, blah." Look, I don't work like that. I don't work to anybody.

Who are the ones that have the guts to come live with me? That was Blake. Blake have something to share, have no fear. He's an independent guy. I like Blake very much, so I needed to press the button in my YouTube channel, done. That's the way we spread the news. I think there is a lot of lessons in these things. Media have changed, information flow have changed and I think people need to address things in a different way, and I just press the button. It's so simple now.

[laughter]

Jeff: Just press record.

Humberto: Just press record and not even record, I'll go live. I just--

Kim Flottum: Oh, that too.

Jeff: It was live.

Humberto: It was live, and I improvised with Blake. We just talk things from our heart, just I think made mistakes sometimes, and then we correct them later. Just keep going. Just keep moving.

Becky: Blake shared some pictures-

Humberto: Oh, yes.

Becky: -and then he started saying, and correct me if I get the number wrong, but he's like, "This is a million dollars in losses." He shared a number of pictures of bee equipment, of dead-outs. They weren't necessarily even his, but beekeepers were sharing their losses with him to then share with you. Did I recall that correctly?

Humberto: Yes, Blake, he's an entrepreneur, a young guy. He has multiple businesses in the beekeeping industry. One of these avenues is he is a broker too. He work with a lot of commercial guys with pollination services and things like that, so he deal with a lot of other people's hives as well. He was able to see them, not only his bees, but other people's bees were dying in big quantities. He took the photos there and was very impressive photos. Each photo, I don't know if people saw my livestream, but if they can go there and watch, each one of those photos were a million-dollar loss and he showed-

Becky: A lot of those.

Humberto: -lots of those photos. All the praise for him because he has the guts to come and talk as fast as possible and was pretty nice conversation. I love it.

Jeff: Can you recap what is known at this point?

Humberto: Things that are coming to my understanding right now, because I still calling people and people call me and I'm trying to get more information to see what direction should we go even with research or if the number of hives are dying, talking with beekeepers, and this is me speculating with that. Including myself, people at home don't take what I say like as it's the truth. We are learning this. There's a big wave going on now and everybody's going to go with the flow.

What is in my mind right now is that we had very big and impactful different weather events in the last couple of months. Even Florida was under snow. There is a lot of things going on with the weather in the past months that can be very detrimental for bees, especially bees that are working commercial apiaries, dealing under a little bit more pressure than other bees in backyard of people's house.

When weather events like that happen, that's a recipe for a lot of different things to happen. One is pathogens. They take advantage of those things. There are some circulations and some people bringing some information in that they saw some very high nosema counts in some of those hives. There is other people talking about black queen cell virus bees all over the places going on. There is nosema going on, there is a virus going on, some ideas and thoughts on that.

There is another one that is me because I like to talk about that and that's something that is not-- people don't understand this kind of event very well because they don't work in the commercial world very much, so I'm going to need to try to explain correctly.

A lot of those commercial operations, they work with crews of people. They recruit people, and they are temporary workers, and they need to do the job when they are hired. One thing that happens in those weather events is that once you hire that person, a lot of them are coming from other countries. They need to come, do the work, and go back home. That's the way it works. In a weather events like that, they cannot just wait. The person already hired a person, so they came, they need to do the job and go.

What can happen sometimes, and that happens in the past, is that they need to do the job in a very bad weather conditions. They need to open the hives in a situation they're not supposed to open the hives. They need to do treatments in different weathers that those treatments are not supposed to be doing at that time and moment and weather. That happened and people need to remember those things.

This can bring very interesting explanation for what happened. That's why I'm very careful here about what kind of theory or whoever guy on YouTube you like that's going to say something, including me, Dr. B from Inside the Hive TV, don't take it-- we are learning because everybody's going to say whatever they see in front of them right now.

This is the thing that I heard right now. Some [unintelligible 00:13:11], some viruses especially black queen cell virus, but this event with the weather, with the workers is something that is always a recipe, but people are not going to share that too much because that's not fun, it's not mysterious, that kind of thing that people like to go, "The bees are dying. Let me think about something. I'm going to help them," which is always part of the fun, but that's what I have right now. I'm still accumulating. I'm going to share a lot of the information that I'm gathering in my channel on YouTube, with my newsletter. If people want to follow that, please just go there, [laughs] I guess.

Jeff: We'll have links to those in our show notes. You're not ready to call this CCD part two?

Humberto: No. There is a big loss whatever CCD was too. This is another thing that I would like to see the government files on CCD because when I was there two years ago, I didn't see much, but there was a lot of waves. Maybe it's me.

Becky: Can I ask a couple of follow-up questions?

Humberto: Yes, please. Thank you.

Becky: [laughs] At first, there's a word you didn't use that I'm so used to hearing all the time when we talk about bee health, but you didn't mention varroa or a possible failure of resistance to amitraz or anything like that. Is that on the table still?

Humberto: Yes. Die-offs are always a combination of lots of different things. These are the two things that are always on top of the list. They're there, they're always there, they're always going to be there. Bee catastrophes like that is when we add something extra to that because we always pushing the bees to the maximum of them all the time, especially in commercial operations. That's why I don't talk about them too much, because in my mind, they are there and they're not going anywhere, at least right now with the bees that we have, the bees we breed, and the bees we like.

As commercial people, 90% of the bees are controlled by 5% of the beekeepers in the United States. People need to understand that. There is a specific kind of bees that are more productive for specific reasons. Even though the majority of the people don't like to hear those things, but it's very important that commercial guys, they know what they're doing. They lose much less bees than backyards or sideliners if people don't know the data. I think I lost my thought.

[laughter]

Becky: It's that word varroa.

Humberto: Yes, varroa. Yes, varroa is always there.

Becky: I just wanted you to address that. I think if varroa would be implicated, it would be because maybe one of the controls failed because of increased resistance or something like that, because they are much more on it because their livelihood depends on it.

Humberto: Yes, the resistance to amitraz is a problem. These guys are experienced beekeepers. I think that kind of explanation for some very experienced people, it's unlikely.

Becky: They would know because they're testing?

Humberto: They will know. They can feel this in advance if things are not going to the right direction. Especially with Blake, these guys know what they're doing.

Jeff: We really enjoy having you here to talk to us about this and brings some new light to what you brought to your channel last week. I guess there's really no real reason to run around saying, "The sky is falling again." There is some concern. We need to investigate it more, have a better understanding of what the relationship between possible causes are, but there are losses. We're not discounting that, but it's not, the sky is falling and go seek shelter.

Humberto: From the amount of the commercial guys apparently was a big hit. Bigger than normal. That we can say that. If that's something extraordinary, I would say we are going to that direction right now. Maybe we're not there, but it was impactful. I'm not going to say that was not impactful.

Jeff: All right.

Becky: Humberto, are the losses still happening and still being reported or is this something--?

Humberto: Yes.

Becky: Okay.

Humberto: I am following this with some folks. There is some forms circulating among commercial beekeepers right now and all kind of beekeepers. A project [unintelligible 00:17:52] is helping with that to collect all this information. I think they're going to have a much better idea about what's going on regarding the numbers. Let's see how long is going to take for them to collect that data and to release to the public. If I got any data, you're going to see immediately me pressing the button.

[laughter]

Becky: People can subscribe to your newsletter and to be notified.

Humberto: Yes.

Becky: Correct?

Humberto: The newsletter is free. I have a newsletter and they're free. Everybody can join to see what I'm thinking with the things that I'm doing and the photos and things that I share there. Some are great news, some are just fun, and some is just me ranting because I'm mad.

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, Humberto, I appreciate you stopping in this afternoon to share with our listeners both your background, your show, and what you've been able to uncover and learn about the losses the beekeepers are seeing so far this year in 2025.

Humberto: Jeff, it's a pleasure working with you. Becky, pleasure working with you. I'm a big fan of the podcast. You guys are always in my car with me all the time, so I feel that I know you guys more than--

Becky: [laughs] Thank you.

Humberto: We're very friends.

Jeff: Just hanging from the rearview mirror, just swinging away.

Humberto: Yes.

Becky: [laughs] We are going to have you back very soon to have a longer conversation. Thank you so much.

Jeff: Look forward to that.

Humberto: That would be a pleasure.

Jeff: Thanks Humberto.

Humberto: Thank you, guys.

[music]

[00:19:35] [END OF AUDIO]