Why are bees making less honey? Study reveals clues from five decades of data

• Study that analyzed 50 years of data on honey production and its relation to soil, climate, land use, herbicide use and weather in the U.S.
• The study found that soil productivity and climate conditions were the main factors that determined the baseline level of honey production, while land use, herbicide use and weather anomalies influenced the annual variation.
• The study also suggested that climate change, land management and pollinator conservation could affect the future of honey production and the availability of floral resources for honey bees and other pollinators.

Hey, did you know that bees are making less honey these days? It's been happening since the 90s, and no one really knows why. But some smart people from Penn State have been digging into this mystery and they found some interesting stuff.

They looked at data from the last 50 years from all over the U.S., and they tried to figure out what could be affecting how many flowers grow in different places—and how that affects how much honey bees make.

They published their study in a journal called Environmental Research Letters, and they said that honey production changed over time because of things like how much weed killer people use and how they use the land, like if they have programs that help pollinators or not. The weather also played a role in how much honey was made.

The data they used came from different sources, like the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service and USDA Farm Service Agency, and they had information like how much honey each bee colony made, how people used the land, how much weed killer they used, what the climate was like, how the weather changed, and how good the soil was for growing crops in the U.S.

They found out that the climate and the soil quality were some of the most important things for estimating how much honey bees could make. States that had hot or cold climates made more honey if they had good soil.

The soil and climate conditions of each region set the basic level of honey production, but things like land use, weed killer use and weather changes affected how much honey was made each year, they said.

Gabriela Quinlan, the main person behind the study and a NSF postdoc in Penn State's Department of Entomology and Center for Pollinator Research, said she wanted to do this study because she heard a lot of beekeepers say the same thing: You just can't make honey like you used to.

Quinlan said that after 1992, the climate became more important for honey production.

"We don't know how climate change will keep affecting honey production, but our study might help us guess what will happen," Quinlan said. "For example, there might be less flowers for pollinators in the Great Plains as the climate gets warmer and more mild, but there might be more flowers in the mid-Atlantic as it gets hotter."

Another person who worked on the paper, Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research, said that scientists already knew that many things affect how many flowers grow and how much nectar they make, but before this study, they only looked at one region of the U.S.

"What's really cool about this study is that we used 50 years of data from the whole U.S.," she said. "This let us really see how soil, climate, weather, land use and land management affect how much nectar there is for honey bees and other pollinators."

One of the biggest problems for pollinators is not having enough flowers to get enough pollen and nectar for food, the researchers said. Because different places can have different kinds of flowers depending on the climate and soil, they said people are interested in finding out which regions and landscapes have enough flowers to be good for bees.

She told me that honey making depends on a lot of things, but mostly on how many flowers there are. Honey bees are awesome at finding and collecting sweet stuff from different kinds of flowers and making honey out of it. She wondered if less honey meant less flowers for the bees and other bugs that help plants grow. And if that was true, what was messing up the environment for the flowers?

Quinlan was really excited about finding out that how good the soil was mattered a lot for the flowers and the bugs. She said that most people only looked at how much food the soil had, but not how it felt or looked or how well it worked. She said that these things affected how many and what kinds of flowers could grow there.

The team also discovered that having less soybean fields and more land set aside for nature helped the bees make more honey. This was because the nature land had more flowers for the bees, while the soybean fields had less.

Another thing that mattered was how much weed killer was used. This could make less honey because it killed some of the flowers that the bees liked.

Quinlan said that their findings could help people figure out how to make more honey, how to help plants grow better, and how to take care of the flowers and the bugs that need them.

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