How are your colonies wintering? By Dewey M. Caron
The annual PNW survey is now open. https://pnwhoneybeesurvey.com/ (click on !Take the Survey!). It extends mid-March through April. After you have had a chance to open your colonies and assess your winter success, please take the time to enter your data in the survey. It should take less than 5 minutes. This year you can fast track your responses and only provide information on overwintering successes/losses. Reports by clubs with 20+ member responses are posted beginning within a month following survey close April 30th.
The members of Central coast have been supportive of this annual survey of Oregon and Washington backyard beekeepers (50 colonies or fewer). With Ramesh Sagili, I also do a commercial beekeeper survey (50+ colonies) to accompany the pnw honey bee survey. I encourage Central Coast members to participate, this 16th year of the survey. It helps document annual loss of bees overwinter. The 16-year record is shown below; the dashed line is the loss trend.. https://pnwhoneybeesurvey.com/survey-results/
I am sure most of you are aware of very high levels of losses being reported by commercial beekeepers the past two winters. According to a Survey from Auburn University, overall annual losses for U.S. beekeepers in 2022-23 was 55.1% of managed bee colonies (37.3% overwintering loss). A preliminary survey by Project Apis m (PAm) of losses this current year, June 2024 to February 2025 was even higher 62% for 702 commercial beekeepers. Losses of (fewer individual) side-liner and hobbyist beekeeper during the same period was 50% and 54% respectively. Oregon beekeepers, responding to the survey lost between 50,000 and 100,000 colonies. Samples have been taken and are being analyzed; there are several theories being floated for possible reasons for the heavy losses the past two seasons so we await sample analyses.