Where Minnesota's honeybee population stands

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - Giving us a tour of her South Minneapolis backyard bee haven, Terry McDaniel is a beekeeper, advocate, and board member of the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association. She also knows firsthand — just like her worker bees — keeping a hive alive isn’t easy. 

"I have been losses of at least 30%, sometimes more," says McDaniel.

To help regain what she loses, McDaniel is also part of a small army of volunteers on the local capture team. This natural process of a swarm of tens of thousands of bees on the move is a good thing, and an indication the hive is healthy enough to reproduce. 

"It’s not a question of are honey bees declining and going extinct," says Nathalie Steinhauer. "No it’s more of a question: ‘Can beekeepers stay sustainable?’"

According to Steinhauer, and a new study conducted by the national nonprofit Bee Informed, nearly half of the colonies collapsed last year. However, for honeybees, it's not quite as bad as it sounds. Through studying commercial and amateur colonies since 2007, researchers believe colony loss really should be looked at as mortality rate, not population loss. 

"During that same timeframe as the survey, so through the last 16 years, the honey bee population has been relatively stable. About 2.6 to 2.7 million honey bee colonies in the country," says Steinhauer. "So basically we have a stable population with a high mortality rate."

"Honeybees are like cattle. They are managed, so we can count those," says Laurie Schneider, executive director of Pollinator Friendly Alliance. 

Compared to honeybees, it’s the native or wild bees away from well-fed backyards she’s concerned about. The impacts of the drought, wildfires, and various pollutants in our environment are unknown at this point.  

"We are just starting to get a handle on all that," says Schneider. "Actually nationally we don’t know how many wild bees there are today compared to like two years ago, or 10 years ago. What we do know of all those more than 500 bees about 40 of them we haven’t seen. We haven’t seen them in more than 10 years, so they are probably extinct."

For now, Schneider and other advocates are celebrating the Highways for Habitats bill passing through Minnesota’s legislative session. The new law basically mandates MnDOT to move away from simply mowing more grass along our interstates and move toward what Iowa and a handful of other states have developed for years: Miles of well-established flowering plants adding to the healthy food menu for bees and other insects.

"It’s $1 million dollars so that’s just enough to get the program started," says Schneider "So we are hoping we can build on that in future years."

In Washington County’s Pine Park, 13 acres have been transformed from a corn field to pollinator-friendly plants. Advocates hope these efforts are just the beginning, as the bees play a critical, delicate role in ultimately feeding the rest of us.

"If people can just plant more native plants and feed the insects, we'll just be so much better off.," says McDaniel.