PLB "Notes on honey production.  Recently, Montana, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota produced almost half the US production and harbored almost one third of US colonies in summer. "


Finally, something that I do know about.  Sometimes getting old, I actually officially added another year today, has an advantage.


This may be the most important factoid in the whole discussion.  These 5 states drive US production, and they always have.  


At least six critical parameters have changed just in my 72 years of continuous residence in Montana:


1) How the statistics are collected,
2) Composition of beekeepers,
3) Practices of MT beekeepers, 

4) Pests and diseases,

5) Climate,
6) Agricultural floral resources.


Whereas I can only indirectly speak to MN, ND, and SD - I do know MT




1)  When I started focusing on bees, 44 years ago, every state had a state apiculturalist and trained bee inspectors.  They often manaaged the agricultural statistic collections in their states via collecting data themselves, encouraging reporting, etc.   Now it's a free-for-all, with reporting being more of who gets the agricultural stats notice AND who responds.  There's no real guidance or quality control to data collection.


2) When I started, 44 years ago, most years I could count the number of hobby beekeepers in the entire state on my fingers (in a good year, I might have to include my toes).  The majority of our beekeepers were commercial, either 2nd, 3rd or more generations into the business, OR they first worked and learned beekeeping for an experienced commercial beekeeper.  When tracheal and varroa mites appeared, nearly every hobby beekeepers lost their colonies and few ever returned to beekeeping.  There were no small scale beekeeper clubs or associations, little access to trade magazines, so they just gave up.  As of 2006 the CCD media hype brought  in the Save the Bee crowd and it continues to grow.  Our new apicultural inspector estimates 500-1000 small scale beekeepers in the state, and any area with what we call a city  has a bee club in addition to the MT State Beekeeping Association.  Our state's beekeeping is no longer conducted simply by experienced, commercial beekeepers.


3) When..... honey was the cash crop, moving bees for pollination except to local or nearby orchards did not occur.  If moved at all, bee were re-located to a nearby county or just across an adjacent state line.  Most moves were simply shuffling of beeyards depending on weather - most had yards that were marginal some years, but good honey producers in a wet year, etc.  Now, as far as I know, these days only one major MT beekeeping operation does NOT migrate, all the rest are migratory, moving some 175,000 reported (I suspect the number may be closer to 200,000 colonies) each year to CA for almond pollination, followed by  stone fruits, usually ending with apples.  That also leads to colonies arriving back in MT for honey production in May or even June -  often missing the first spring blooms of dandelions and other flowers that jump start colony brood rearing.   I can readily see that affect - optimally, bees should arrive in MT no later than mid-April to take full advantage of the spring bloom.  Bottom line, MT is where the colonies get a chance to recover from the stress of moving, pollination, etc.  Pump up the  bee populations, increase the numbers of colonies, replace those lost - all of that requires a bigger part of the energy from nectar and pollen.  The honey crop now becomes frosting on the cake.  It no longer drives the industry.  Colony placement at honey production apiaries is delayed by the return from apples and how long it takes to distribute the colonies - often taking until mid-June for the bigger operations.  Just too many colonies to get on site before the main flows begin to occur.


4) When .... I and James Tewe, Malcolm Sanford, Eric Mussen, and Kim Flottum began our careers, one learned the basics of beekeeping, tossed in some antibiotic to control EFB, burned any AFB, and waited to collect a honey crop.  A few viruses were known, if the viruses produced readily visible signs - black queen, k-wing, deformed wing, paralysis.  In some areas one saw a bit of chalk brood and in the spring we saw evidence of N. apis, both of which generally went away as the colonies grew.  That was it!  Now we know bees have 20+ known viruses, at least two mites, at least two Nosema species (which is no longer a protozoan but is now called a microsporidium), small hive beetle, Africanized Bees, may have a new strain or species of foul brood, and have far more human predation (theft of hives, theft of honey combs, vandalism) and a new disease vector (humans with their natural un-managed and un-monitored colonies).


5) When...  our climate had hot summers, cold winters and lots of snow.  Climate change is changing.  The cold winters are shorter and not nearly as cold.  But over the past couple of decades, we're again seeing droughts the remind me of those described for the 1930's by my grand parents and parents.  In past five years, we've had three major drought years, two were record setting in severity and duration.  We now expect to experience smoke events from multiple fires, with smoke so dense that bees first get fiesty and then just hunker in their hives waiting for the smoke to disperse.  In western MT, multiple severe forest fires are becoming an annual event, and we've gone from rare events where fires are everywhere and large areas of the state are enveloped in smog and smoke, to at least one really bad fire year in five.  Last summer the smoke was second worst on record, and we're getting more and more smoke from other western states.  It's no longer just our own fires that produce the smoke the envelopes everything.  Smoke from all over the western states, including CA, is funneled right through MT thanks to our mountains.


6) When... floral resources in the remaining native habitats were an important part of our high honey yields.  Our range lands haven't changed much, and our best honey producing areas are still usually areas with alfalfa fields along riparian creek-bottoms, surrounded by range lands.  The alfalfa and clover fields produce the main nectar flows, the native plants provide subsistence between these flows.  However, the crop lands are changing.  In the NW part of the state, Budweiser has managed to convert hay fields to barley.   As a kid, we grew sugar beets and peas - beets were big in the state, now I believe there's only a couple of sugar processing plants remaining.  The Sugar Beeters of Chinook have lost their corporate sponsor.  My own father headed the shift from beets to corn.  However, we now see crop changes first seen in N. Dakota state show up in MT.  Sunflowers were one of the first, converting the old beet and then corn fields to sunflower oil - in part as a biorenewable source of fuel.  Also we've got some canola showing up around Flathead lake and some in the east part of the state - but still nothing like around Lethbridge, but canola is finally here.  There's a minor shift of dry land grain fields to experimental flowering crops, but I suspect many of those are doomed to fail.  MT is a semi-arid state - similar to the Middle East.  In fact, in the 70s, oil rich arabs came to  MT to try to figure out how we were able to produce dry land wheat.  However, on the whole, I suspect that good honey production areas have been reduced by urban sprawl (it certainly has around Missoula) and the shifts to more honey bee friendly crops are still relatively small - so it's probably a wash.  We do remain an area of low pesticide usage compared to areas like the Central Valley of CA.  We have shut down most of our dirty industrial companies, especially mining and smelting.  We don't kill colonies out-right in the Helena, Butte, Great Falls, and Kalispell valleys.




Finally, I've found the books by John Harvey Lovell to be far more useful in understanding honey production changes in any given state than any statistics.  He addresses not only floral resources but also beekeeping practices, stocking rates, etc.  In some states, the changes are huge.  In others, it's surprisingly similar.  In at least one, I am convinced that the honey yields have been restricted by over-stocking ever since Lovell's time.   When a state honey production average has remained at 40# per colony from 1926 to the current time and the average number of colonies per apiary is 100, one begins to understand why a state like MT with similar climate and floral resources (especially that mix of native plants and crop lands) has an average of 100+ # of honey per colony in a good year (not  a drought year) and an average number of colonies at 24 or 32 per apiary (and we  have over 5500 registered apiaries.   As the 4th largest state with less that 1 million people, we've still got lots of land on which to place hives.
















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