Beekeeping in the United States

Parsons was commissioned by the US government to travel to northern Italy in 1859 to obtain pure strains of Ligurian bees.

By 1890, William L. Coggshall had become the biggest beekeeper in the world, with over 3,000 hives in 15 locations surrounding his home in Groton, NY.

Other hive products are pollen, royal jelly, and propolis, which are also used for nutritional and medicinal purposes, and beeswax, which is used in candle making, cosmetics, wood polish, and for modelling.

[5] The Russian honey bee has shown to be more resistant to the bee parasites Varroa destructor[6] and Acarapis woodi,[citation needed] although their commercial use and availability are extremely limited in scope because other, better strains are available (e.g., VSH lines).

Many make "nucs" (small starter or nucleus colonies) for sale or replenishment of their own losses during the early spring.

As spring moves northward so do the beekeepers, to supply bees for tree fruits, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries and later vegetables.

This is especially common in the springtime, usually within a two- or three-week period depending on the locale, but occasional swarms can happen throughout the producing season.

A problem hereby is that in some countries (i.e. China), the food and safety regulations are considerably weaker, and in some instances, contaminants such as heavy metals and antibiotics are found in the honey.

To make matters even worse, there is no active research on the origin of commercially sold honey, apart from one scientist, Vaughn Bryant.

One major U.S. beekeeper reports moving his hives from Idaho to California in January to prepare for almond pollination in February, then to apple orchards in Washington in March, to North Dakota two months later for honey production, and then back to Idaho by November — a journey of several thousands of miles.

Each spring, migratory beekeepers rent hives to almond farmers in the Central Valley for pollination.

[11] The wider spread and intermingling of honey bees in the US has resulted in far greater losses from Varroa mite infections in recent years, than in countries where beekeepers have non-migratory colonies.

The number of managed colonies in the United States for honey production has been in decline since the 1940s and these losses have increased since the early 2000s.