Hi All

The August issue of the ABJ has the following letter to the editor


There is much talk in the press about honey bees being in decline worldwide. This is clearly contradicted by the actual statistics. There are around 11.5 million colonies in Europe whereas the estimate of the number of wild colonies in Africa is 310 million. African bees are not plagued by any of the pathogens that damage European honey bees. Additionally, it was estimated in 1992 that Africanized bees made up 50 to 200 million colonies in Latin America. Mexico reportedly has 2.1 million colonies of honey bees, most of these are Africanized by now.

There is a very large thriving beekeeping industry in Asia. Turkey has approximately 5 million colonies. According to National Bee Board of India (2006–2007), there are about 1.4 million colonies in the country and honey production is about 52,000 tonnes a year. It has been estimated that the Himalayan region has over six million colonies and nests of indigenous and exotic (European) honeybees. Honey production from approximately 1.6 million colonies owned by about 199,000 Korean beekeepers was almost 23,000 metric tons in 2009.

One report states there are 540,000 managed colonies of honeybees in Australia and an unknown number of feral colonies. As of March 2011 there were 3,251 registered beekeepers, 23,395 apiaries and 388,369 beehives in New Zealand. These beekeeping industries have not suffered widespread losses, although New Zealand now has the varroa mite. Australia still does not. Sanford (1996) reported that the winter kill of managed honey bee colonies by Varroa mite was estimated at 13 million colonies worldwide.

According to the USDA, there were 5.9 million colonies in the US in 1947. FAO reports show 5.5 million in 1961. In the spring of 2013, the US may be down to approximately 2 million colonies. The situation is reversed in China: the number of colonies grew from 3 million in 1960 to 9 million in 2011. This indicates a different trend in the managed honey bee population in China compared with North American and European trends, and there has been no massive loss of bees reported.

Based on FAO data, it is reported that honey bee hives have globally increased by about 45% during the last 50 years, though this has probably been driven by economic globalization (such as the increasing demand for agricultural pollination services) rather than any biological factor. Given the concurrent declines in Europe and the USA, yet overall global increase, this suggests that increases in managed honey bees outside of Europe and the USA must be even greater than 45%, highlighting the stark contrast in trends from different regions of the globe.

FAO Stats for 2011 indicated the following countries had numbers over one million bee hives

1,000,000 Brazil
1,139,410 Egypt
1,150,000 Angola
1,274,920 Romania
1,340,000 Greece
1,400,000 Central African Republic
1,450,000 Poland
1,847,670 Mexico
2,420,000 Spain
2,491,000 USA
2,510,000 Kenya
2,700,000 Tanzania
2,970,000 Argentina
3,049,320 Russian Federation
3,500,000 Iran
5,130,320 Ethiopia
6,011,330 Turkey
8,947,730 China
10,600,000 India



Peter Loring Borst
Ithaca, NY 14853

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