Honeybees

After suffering severe winter losses beginning in 2007, the honey bee population is making a comeback. Still, losses are high, which means beekeepers have to spend a lot of time and money replacing their bees.

It’s National Pollinators Week! As an annual celebration supporting pollinators and pollinator health, we want to highlight USDA’s ongoing investments in pollinator health, crop production, and conservation. USDA’s investments help ensure the continued health of pollinators and their contribution to...

After weeks of searching, Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) entomologists–—using a radio tag provided by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and a trap developed by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service–— have located and eradicated the first Asian giant hornet (AGH)...

Bees and other pollinators, including birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, beetles, and small mammals, play a critical role in our food production system. A healthy pollinator population is vital to producing marketable commodities. More than 100 U.S. grown crops rely on pollinators. The...

Everyone wants healthy, thriving honey bee colonies. One-third of the food we eat requires pollinators, and commercial beekeepers transport honey bees hundreds of miles each year to pollinate almond trees and other crops.

About one mouthful in three in our diets directly or indirectly benefits from honey bee pollination. That makes bees critically valuable to humans’ existence. For this reason the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) documents issues affecting honey bee...

Bee populations in North America have been in decline since the 1940s. This is of great concern to the agriculture industry because about 75 percent of specialty crops depend on the services of pollinators – of which bees are the most economically important.

Pollinators are a vital part of agricultural production. In the United States, more than one-third of all crop production – 90 crops ranging from nuts to berries to flowering vegetables - requires insect pollination. Managed honey bee colonies are our primary pollinators, adding at least $15 billion...

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. Every day, National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) statisticians work hard to produce timely, accurate and useful...

As I’ve learned over my years with the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), in order to make an impact, our information needs to meet the needs of the people who use the data we produce. And while we constantly try to gauge and meet their needs, it is imperative to speak to our data...