Jody Serrano
Editor in chiefEditor in Chief at Xataka On. Before joining Webedia, I was a tech reporter at Gizmodo and The Messenger. While I've covered all sorts of things related to technology, I'm specialized in writing about social media, Internet culture, Twitch, and streamers.
2025 might not have a lot of buzz, according to scientists at Washington State University. Of course, they’re not talking about excitement, but rather a different type of buzz. The one made by honeybees.
60-70%. That’s the percentage of commercial honeybee colony losses the country could see this year. Given that annual loses have typically ranged between 40 and 50% over the last decade, the figure is particularly striking.
It’s still unclear why the colony losses are higher this year, said Priya Chakrabarti Basu, an assistant professor of pollinator health and apiculture at Washington State. However, she suspects the reason is a combination of stressors, including nutrition deficiencies, mite infestation, viral diseases, and possible exposure to pesticide.
“Losses have been increasing steadily,” Basu said in a statement. “Pollination demands haven’t gone down, so beekeepers face tremendous pressure to keep the same number of colonies to meet those needs.”
California almonds. Scientists at the university say that California almond growers and other fruit producers may be the biggest impacted by the honeybee losses. Although more than 90 crops in the U.S. rely on honeybee pollination, California almonds are the biggest crop.
“The almond industry frequently asks for strong colonies,” Brandon Hopkins, a professor of pollinator ecology at Washington State, said. “But this year, growers are desperate. Anything with live bees in a box is in demand because the industry is short on supply. I haven’t heard of that since the early days of colony collapse around 2008.”
Putting a price on bees. Honeybees have a significant impact on the U.S. economy. In 2023, they had a production value of nearly $350 million, according to the Department of Agriculture. Hopkins says that this level of honeybee losses could force more beekeepers into bankruptcy and led to a scramble among farmers.
Bad news for all pollinators. While the Washington State scientists focused on honeybees, other pollinators in North America, such as wasps, flies, butterflies, and bats, aren’t doing so well, either.
A new study in PNAS found that there is an elevated extinction risk in 1,600 species of pollinators, or more than one-fifth, in North America. The authors stated that the major threats facing the pollinators are climate change, agriculture, modifications to hydrological and fire regimes, and housing and urban development.
Looking forward. Although the picture on pollinators isn’t pretty, it’s not all doom and gloom. The scientists at Washington State are working on developing more sustainable practice to reduce honeybee losses and carrying out research on bee nutrition.
Authors of the PNAS study also point out that their study, the largest and most taxonomically diverse of mainland U.S. and Canadian pollinators, will help identify the species and groups that are most in need of conservation action.
Images | Kai Wenzel | Douglas Raggio
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