The Current State of the Industry

This winter, ahead of almond pollination, the biggest event in the American beekeeping industry, commercial beekeepers across the United States have reported unprecedented colony losses—some calling it the worst winter in decades. In response, Project Apis m. (PAm) launched an industry-wide survey. Its respondents, representing over half of the U.S. commercial beekeeping sector, reported an alarming 62% average winter colony losses. The industry faces not just financial devastation but a looming pollination crisis – PAm estimates that these losses translate to over $600 million in lost revenue for the commercial beekeeping industry.

These losses are catastrophic for beekeepers and for our food system, given that a third of our crops depend on managed honeybee pollination. The timing exacerbates the issue: the $4 billion California almond industry already faced a shortage of beehives, jeopardizing the upcoming pollination season. As fewer colonies survive into spring, beekeepers will prioritize rebuilding their operations, leaving crops such as cherries, apples, and blueberries struggling to secure strong colonies for pollination.
 

This is Not an Outlier Event

Because of the severity of these losses, stakeholders in the industry (and members of the media) seem to be treating this as an outlier event, sometimes comparing it to the mid-2000’s Colony Collapse Disorder.I’ve noticed the beekeeping support network is hunting for a smoking gun that would explain the higher losses, as if this specific event was different from the previous years. However, mortality rates have been steadily increasing for over a decade. Data from the Bee Informed Partnership and Auburn University has been showing a concerning trend: survey respondents reported annual colony losses have risen from 35% in 2010 to 55% in recent years.

Just as climate change is driving more frequent hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, rising colony losses are not anomalies but symptoms of a systemic crisis. If we continue treating them as unpredictable disasters rather than inevitable consequences of existing vulnerabilities, the industry will remain stuck in a cycle of reaction rather than prevention.
 

A Lot of Guessing, Not Enough Data

Naturally, beekeepers are asking the most pressing question: What caused this? Speculation is rampant across industry forums, yet the lack of data limits definitive answers. 

Is there a new, unknown virus roaming around the US’ colonies? Are new pesticides, with unknown effects on pollinators, being used without public knowledge? Is the intensification of monoculture farming and the progressive disappearance of proper forage, starving bees from the necessary nutrition, the real culprit? Are bees more resistant to existing varroa management techniques? Did natural disasters, such as hurricane Helene, wildfires and tropical storms, combined to affect a significant portion of the stocks? Have tough winters in key honeybee colony wintering regions delayed brood growth? 

Fingers have been pointed in different directions, some suggesting that beekeepers are responsible for the current downfall. Amidst an extended honey production season in the midwest last Summer, did beekeepers push their luck and stretch it a little too long before applying varroa treatments, compromising parasites management? In the context of high operational costs following an inflationary economy with low prices on key revenue sources, did beekeepers skim on providing supplemental nutrition for their bees? 

The truth is, at this stage, not enough high quality data is available to properly understand how this situation is evolving in real-time, meaning that we’re far from understanding the cause behind these historically high losses. 

The Industry’s Data Scarcity Problem

The beekeeping industry operates with a severe data deficit on all of its levels, from the field to the lab all the way to Congress. In a time of crisis, it took over a month to collect generalized and survey-based data to quantify the extent of colony losses. Meanwhile, government scientists, university researchers, and other research groups are trying their best to conduct field studies, collecting hive samples in hopes of identifying potential causes. However, research efforts are constrained by the lack of quality, real-time hive health metrics, environmental conditions, and management data in sufficient volume and quality for comprehensive analysis. 

This means that by the time tangible research findings emerge (if any), the industry could already be facing the next catastrophic loss event. This lack of data also prevents the industry from answering hard but necessary questions, such as: how much agency do beekeepers really have over the problems they’re facing?

The Need for a Holistic, Predictive Approach

There is very little chance that one singular factor will emerge as the definitive cause of this season’s higher losses. While industry stakeholders may hope for a clear-cut answer, mounting scientific evidence suggests that colony mortality is driven by complex interplay of environmental, biological, and management factors — exacerbated by climate change, a phenomenon individuals have very little agency over. 

The industry’s current fragmented approach to data collection leads to blind spots in research and compounding uncertainties, exponentially expanding the risk of generating inconclusive results. Worse, it increases the risk of identifying false positives, sending researchers down the wrong path trying to fix the wrong problem and wasting critical time and resources. 

Nectar believes a paradigm shift in the way we analyze beekeeping data is required so we can process multiple, complex data streams. A better methodology would go beyond livestock numbers and management data and include geospatial data qualifying the bees’ direct environment, weather patterns, and chemical inputs used in agricultural landscapes—so that the factors contributing to colony losses can be better understood before the next crisis unfolds.

Better Data Leads to Better Outcomes

At Nectar, applying the same methodology used by PAm, we discovered that beekeepers using our platform to make data-driven decisions suffered 30% losses for the same period — less than half the 62% industry-wide average reported.

While multiple factors may contribute to this discrepancy — including beekeeper experience, management techniques, access to quality environments, and investment in innovation—this finding raises an important question: how much better can beekeepers proactively mitigate risk and improve their outcomes by accessing better data?

If we can better quantify and understand these variables, the industry will move beyond crisis management and toward resilience.

Empowering the Industry to Thrive

Without a fundamental shift toward gearing up with tools providing real-time data and forecasting modeling, the beekeeping industry will remain trapped in this cycle of increasing hive losses. This past winter’s events are not a one-time crisis – this will be a recurring event. Nectar exists because we believe that a holistic and predictive, data-driven approach isn’t just ideal — it’s essential for the industry to not only survive, but thrive.

To help beekeepers prepare for this future, the next step for Nectar is to not only bring industry-wide forecasting capabilities into our platform, but also provide individual beekeepers with predictive tools – enabling the possibility of weighing different scenarios, to pick the most profitable one and plan accordingly – for their own operation. 

Beyond this, we also strongly believe that the beekeepers’ support ecosystem needs to step up its game. This isn’t just about collecting more and better data; it’s also about ensuring that researchers and policymakers access and use that industry-wide insights effectively to inform their decisions and help prevent catastrophic losses before they happen. Beekeepers have long operated in an environment where uncertainty is the norm, but we now have the technological capability to change that. This is the turning point. Now is the time to make that shift.