[Bonus] Short - Colony and USDA Losses with AHPA's President Steve Coy

[Bonus] Short - Colony and USDA Losses with AHPA's President Steve Coy

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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 Beekeeping Today Podcast Shorts. Hey, let's get right into it. Sitting with Becky and me today is Steven Coy, president of the American Honey Producers Association and of the Coy Bee Company. Longtime listeners of the podcast will remember Steve from being on the podcast talking about Russian bees as he was president of the Russian Bee Breeders. Is that correct, Steve? President?

Steve Coy: Yes. Russian. Yes, I'm a past president of the Russian Honeybee Breeders Association.

Jeff: Yes, very cool. We'll have to have you back on to talk about the Russian bees because we constantly get questions and interest in the Russian bees. Today we've asked you to come in and talk to us in your capacity as the president of the American Honey Producers Association about the recent losses and also the cutbacks in the USDA programs that have been going on in the last couple weeks. Thank you for joining us.

Steven: Thanks, Jeff and Becky for having me. I wish it was under different circumstances, but I'm glad to talk to your listeners about what AHPA is doing and what we think we can do in the future.

Becky: Yes. Thanks so much for being here.

Jeff: This is changing daily. We're recording this on Monday morning, the 24th of February. We have the latest from the project [unintelligible 00:01:46]. They've divided it up into hobbyist, sideliners, and commercials. Roughly 50% of all hobbyists have experienced losses, 54% of sideliners, and then up to 62% of commercial beekeepers have all experienced losses from June to now for the season. That's representing a big impact to the industry.

Becky: Yes, I think you said they have experienced losses, but I think you meant they've lost that many percent of their bees.

Jeff: Thank you.

Becky: That's a big difference because I think almost everybody's experienced losses.

Steven: Yes. The experienced losses is a constant year-round thing. Yes, so there were over 700 people who responded to the survey that when they stopped counting about a week ago, I know there's had a few more people fill out the survey, but of the commercial beekeepers that filled it out, 62% of their bees were dead compared to their June numbers. Some guys have lost 90%, 100%. Some guys have only lost 40%. I'm sitting at a 61% loss since my peak of last year. I don't even go to almonds, so I just stay in Mississippi the whole time.

Becky: Oh, and that's so different than the numbers reported by commercial beekeepers in previous years. Usually, their numbers are below, that's the 60% below 50%.

Steven: Yes, the 13-year average is 42%, I believe. Last year it jumped up to 55% losses. Then, of course, this year it's already well. Those were the BIP survey numbers. Right now they're estimating it's a 62% loss of those are reported. I'm guessing that across the whole nation, when you look into Michigan, Iowa, and New York, the stuff on the East Coast guys who don't go to almonds, it's going to be close to 70% loss across the board. That's my guess. That's my pessimistic worst-case scenario, I guess.

Becky: When you're talking about that kind of loss, that's when you start confronting food security issues. These bees are working bees and they're pollinating crops across the US. Have you heard about shortages of pollinating bees?

Steven: Almonds get all the news, all the credit, so do they get all the fanfare because it's the biggest single event. It's a huge thing. There are not going to be very many almond acres without bees because beekeepers are so ingenuitive? They work so hard that they're going to make sure that as many acres of almonds that need bees get bees but there's not going to be very many acres that have good bees.

I've heard reports of guys sending four framers out there and getting paid ridiculous prices for a four frame of bees because the almond growers have to have something on their farm to meet their requirements for their insurance. As far as how many acres we're going to be without bees, that's not an accurate way to represent the shortage because almond growers are going to be willing to take garbage bees just to fulfill their insurance policies. The number's going to be somewhere close to 500,000 colonies that should be going in-- They already have a million colonies are dead that they were planning on putting in the almonds that they know of.

Jeff: Yes. John was talking last week about people seeing trucks of bees headed east and they're saying--

Steven: It's just trucks of boxes.

Jeff: Yes, that, "Wow, why are the bees going east?" No, those are dead boxes. That's not a good sign.

Steven: Yes. I just have about an 1,800-hive operation. I'm trying to get to 2,000 this year if I can make that happen. I don't send any bees to almonds because I raise queens and make a few nucs. I don't have to deal with that rat race and chaos. I know a lot of guys that do, and it's been a pretty stressful three weeks for these guys.

Becky: Yes. It's just the beginning of pollination season and then they move on to other crops...

Steven: Right. After almonds, and I don't know the exact order, but on the west coast, there's citrus, cherries, and apples. Cherries and apples are the next two big things. If they don't have enough bees for almonds, there's not going to be enough bees for apples or cherries. Then on the East Coast, there's guys from Georgia that go north. They're either selling packages or they're selling nucs or they just move their bees up north and they do squash and the pumpkins and the cucurbits, and then they end up with the blueberries and the cranberries. There's going to be a shortage of good pollination-sized colonies across the whole US this year.

Jeff: Not only from the impact on the food supply, if you look at it from pollination standpoint. From the hobbyist beekeeper standpoint, those who are looking forward to getting their packages this spring, there's likely to be a shortage of those available packages come the end of April.

Steven: If it's not a shortage, there will probably be a delay in when you can get your packages.

Becky: All of this could translate into more expensive produce at the grocery store and it's not going to help with prices going in the right direction, which would be down or staying even but it could potentially go up.

Steven: Oh, it's definitely going to have an impact, or the produce people will just try to buy more supply from Mexico or foreign countries. No matter what happens, it's not good for the American consumer or the other specialty crop producers if they can't meet their demand or if their prices are too high and so then somebody else gets supply from someone else, then that hurts their business for years. We're not going to recover next year. It's going to take two years or maybe three to get back to these 2.7 million colonies that we had if we get there.

Jeff: I was going to say that's two or three good years, right?

Steven: Yes. If you've lost 70% of your operation, you can't replace those in one year. You can do it in two years, but not if you have another 60% or 70% loss. Some guys are not even going to get back to where they were.

Becky: Importantly, nobody knows what exactly is happening.

Steven: Correct. There's people out there saying it's everything from the bird flu to who knows what else. Everybody wants to pontificate about what it is and myself and AHPA have been pretty adamant that we don't know what it is. We all have our own personal suspicions based on our own personal experience, but let's wait and see what the science says. We had a similar incident out of Florida, I believe that was last year, or maybe it was year before last. When they got bees to almonds, they noticed a significant portion of them were dead or dying. I don't know the whole detail, but it has something to do with a couple of agriculture products that were used. I don't know if they were used off-label or if they were used. They were widely used, and that information has just recently come out. It's going to be published soon, if not already. This kind of information takes time to get it out there, so people just running out there and saying, "Hey, it was this pesticide or this monocyte or this bad beekeeper or bird flu," is really irresponsible. We've been trying to not do that.

Jeff: Along these lines and very much relatedly, at the same time we're experiencing these high losses, we are experiencing losses within the primary organization, primary government department responsible for doing the research on this, and that's the losses in the bee labs at the USDA. How do you think that's going to impact what we find out and how quickly we find out anything?

Steven: Apparently, that's not going to have much of an impact on the initial data collection and data analysis. If they can come up with something that says, "Hey, this is likely what happened," or "These are the factors that contributed to this death," if we have fewer scientists in the ARS bee research labs, it's just going to take longer to do that. Trump, he's the disruptor in chief at the moment. I know of one scientist that lost her job. There's been a couple of other scientists, I think, and I know there's been several research assistants or support staff at ARS that lost their job, and one particular lab that basically cut them in half of what they can do.

It's going to be tough, but our approach is, let's just wait until all the dust settles. Trump's doing his thing, that whether you voted for him or not doesn't make a difference. He's doing what he's doing, so let's wait till this is all settled, and then we'll see where we can rebuild. We may end up with a better bee research in the US than we have now if we can have more cooperation with government and universities. We're going to have to figure out how to make this work to our advantage because we are where we are in this situation.

Jeff: Right.

Becky: We've had a number of USDA scientists, Jay Evans and Diana Cox-Foster and others, on the program. The one thing that is so apparent is the collaboration that they are already doing with other universities and other research scientists out there. At the very least, when you lose that support staff, you're going to lose potential projects, which I've heard some have been lost, but also just the speed of data collection and analysis. There's a lot of important work being done by the USDA right now to support honeybee health and in collaboration with other universities. We are going to see a slowdown at a really bad time, unfortunately.

Steven: Yes, there's never a good time for a bad thing to happen, but there can be bad times for bad things to happen. This couldn't happen at a worse time.

Jeff: What can beekeepers do, regardless whether you're a hobbyist, a sideliner, or a commercial beekeeper, what can we do as beekeepers to blend our voice to trying to get something done, to help ourselves out instead of wringing our hands?

Steven: When you're dealing with the federal government, anytime the federal government does something quickly, it's usually not very good for everyone. It's only good for a few people. You got to be patient. That's the first thing. If you've lost bees, you should write a letter that says, "This is my business. This is the impact it has on me and my family and my employees, and we need you to do something." You can send that to info@ahpanet.com, and we will pass that along to the Secretary of Ag.

We sent 35 letters last week to the Secretary of Ag, along with the letter that I wrote, asking for a meeting. You can still fill out the PAm survey. If you're a commercial beekeeper listening to this, please fill out that PAm survey because we need more commercial beekeepers to fill that out. I just urge people, you can have your own opinion of what's caused this, but please try to limit your social media presence on pontificating as to what was the real cause, because whatever the real cause is, if we can determine that, if that message gets lost in the chaos of social media, then we've all lost the benefit of all the hard work that these ARS scientists are putting in to find what the cause is.

Becky: That's so well said, Steven.

Jeff: Nicely said. Is there anything you want to mention to our listeners before we wrap this up and in closing?

Steven: Oh, well, as the newly elected president of AHPA, it's been a chaotic first two months with everything going on. Just be patient, and if you're a commercial beekeeper, sign up for the ELAP program. If you have problems with the ELAP program, contact me. I can get you into contact with people who can help but just be strong and just keep on going. There's only one way to get through this, and that's to keep going forward.

Becky: Steven, can you share what the ELAP program is, for those people who are familiar with the acronym?

Steven: Emergency Livestock Assistance Program. The FSA, Farm Service Agency, started it back in-- They incorporated honeybees into it, I think, back as far as 2008, but it's for sideline or commercial beekeepers. When they lose colonies, it will pay partially. You get about 50% of whatever they say the value is for a colony. There's some, not intense, but there's some detailed recordkeeping that's required, but it's the only federal program that we have to support the beekeeping industry.

Jeff: Very good.

Becky: Thank you.

Jeff: Thanks, Steve, for joining us today. We look forward to having you back to talk about something happier, such as the Russian bees and how they're doing and how people can find out more about Russian bees. That will be a good return to a good topic.

Steven: Yes, I'd be glad to come back, and thanks for having me today. If anybody has questions about the American Honey Producers Association, they can find us on the website, or my email is not hard to find. Email me, call me. I'll answer the questions as best I can.

Jeff: Thanks a lot, Steve.

Becky: We appreciate it. Thank you.

Steven: Thank you.

[00:17:36] [END OF AUDIO]