Review: Daberdow et al. (2009). Journal of Economic Entomology, 102: 868-886

Written: July 6, 2009

Posted: 07/07/09

Word count: 656

Question: What does the apiculture industry look like demographically?

Answer: Long in the tooth, shrinking, and consolidating

If you ever get a chance, try reading some of the beekeeping periodicals from about 100 years ago. The stalwarts American Bee Journal and the Gleanings from Bee Culture (now just Bee Culture) have been published for well over a century, and filing through their pages of history can tell us a great deal about who we are (and who we were) as beekeepers. For example, it may be hard to imagine, but before the ubiquitous scourges of varroa mites, small hive beetles, and colony collapse disorder, the most dreaded and feared pest of beehives was none other than the lowly wax moth. “Fear galleria!” one headline proclaimed! My, how things change…

Another interesting article, published in ABJ about 75 years ago, was equally as enlightening. Go to any beekeepers meeting today, and you tend to find a particular audience on average that, to put it gently, is somewhat getting on in years. Indeed, a frequent discussion among beekeepers is that we need to educate youths—grade- and high-school-aged kids—in how to become beekeepers, lest the craft will disappear entirely from human society. While I have absolutely no quibbles with such an initiative, you may find it interesting that the exact same argument was being made in 1933, and for the exact same reasons. The more things change, the more they stay the same…

What both of these lessons from the past tell us is that it is often important to keep a historical perspective on things, particularly on issues dealing with large scales or populations. It is exactly this perspective that a new article in the Journal of Economic Entomology provides, at least over the last few decades, for the beekeeping industry in the U.S. The authors used statistical data from the USDA to illustrate many trends among professional beekeepers, and places them into a greater context with other agricultural industries over the same time period.

Here are some of their major findings. (1) The number of colonies nationwide dropped by over 20% between 1982 and 2002, so now we have roughly 2.2 – 2.4 million beehives in the U.S. This isn’t all that surprising, as these numbers are fairly well known to those of us in the beekeeping community. (2) More drastically, there has been a precipitous decline in the number of beekeeping operations (as they call it, “beekeeping farms”) during the same period, with fewer than 70% professional apiculture enterprises than there were 20 years ago. Most of these operations, however, had fewer than 25 colonies and are therefore considered part-time or “hobbyist” operations. (3) The direct consequence of the above two points demonstrates a significant consolidation in the industry, with more and more of the beehives in the nation being managed by a smaller and smaller subset of beekeepers. Interestingly, this trend mirrors similar trends in many other agricultural enterprises (they highlight several examples including field crops such as corn, wheat, and cotton, as well as vegetables and orchard crops such as apples, almonds, and oranges). (4) Beekeepers, as a demographic group, are very similar to farmers in general; almost 9 out of 10 beekeepers are white, male, and have an average age of 55.

The authors warn that their findings are only as accurate as the statistics, and that there may be some biases in the data. Nonetheless, it is clear that there have been some major shifts in the apiculture industry in the last few decades, and the trends do not seem to be abating. It makes one wonder how much change we can sustain before things are no longer the same…

Reference

Daberdow, S., P. Korb, and F. Hoff. (2009). Structure of the U.S. beekeeping industry: 1982-2002. Journal of Economic Entomology, 102: 868-886.