2022/23 state losses have been calculated from this past spring’s Loss and Management Survey and are now available online! At https://research.beeinformed.org/loss-map/ you can find the level of reported loss for our three seasons (winter, summer, and annual), sort the results, and filter based on single-state or multi-state operations. Loss level is calculated per state for any operation that visits that state during the survey period when “Operation Type” is selected as “All”. These results are available per year, and beginning last year we made available a download of all state loss data here.
This year we see a high level of annual loss in some states, with beekeepers operating in 17 states losing half or more of their colonies during the survey period. This isn’t all that unusual however, and is actually down from 26 states in 2021/22. As either a hobby or as a business, would you find it acceptable that 1/2 or more of the colonies perishing is acceptable? Our surveyed respondents said no, when they reported that an average loss level of 21.3% would be acceptable. This and other details from the survey are distributed with the data explorer linked above, and the survey’s homepage link.
