LOVELAND, Ohio – Roughly 10 years ago, the beekeeping industry was under attack. Varroa mites and tracheal mites were decimating colonies throughout the tri-state region. Then there was the threat of Africanized honey bees. And just a few years back the danger lurking was that of colony collapse disorder, or CCD.

Not much has changed over the past 10 years. Issues still confront the average beekeeper, but these apiary hobbyists don’t give up easily. In fact, a capacity crowd of 300 was on hand at a recent Southwestern Ohio Beekeeping School at The Oasis Center in Loveland.

“Beekeeping is like a roller coaster in that we either have feast or famine,” said Dave Heilman, who has been a beekeeper for 48 years. He is a former employee at Ohio State University’s Bee Lab and longtime presenter at this annual gathering of beekeepers. Heilman worked alongside renowned beekeeper and bee expert Dr. James Tew at OSU.

“We still have issues with varroa mites, tracheal mites, pesticides and fungicides,” Heilman added. “These are major issues with beekeepers because we lose a lot of honey bees here in Ohio every year. Depending on who you talk to there’s a variety of contributing factors. Everyone has his or her ideas of what’s going on.

“Honey bees can take some problems, but when they’re confronted with three or four problems at once it makes ’keeping tough. At one time we used to think that fungicides that farmers were spraying was no big deal, but we don’t know that anymore.”

Heilman is what one would call a commercial beekeeper. That is, one with 300 or more hives. Heilman migrates his colonies during the year to provide pollination services to farmers and to reach the most abundant sources of nectar.

“I noticed this past year that something was affecting my bees,” Heilman said. “I could spend tens of thousands of dollars in research to find out what’s affecting my hives and still come away with no answers.”

CCD has plagued beekeepers the past five years, but even CCD has been scrutinized.

“It all depends on what we think CCD is,” Heilman said. “We still see bees leaving colonies and leaving their honey. When it comes to problems with hives these days most fingers point to mites. All said, though, all this doesn’t seem to scare off new beekeepers.”

Indeed. For Amy and Barton Fee, of Morrow, Ohio, this was their second straight trip to the Southwest Ohio Beekeeping School, even after the loss of one of their colonies in 2022.

“One hive survived, but the other was struck with hive beetles and the queen left the hive,” Barton said.

“We started beekeeping with two colonies last season with the expectations that we’d likely lose one of them, and we did,” Amy said. “We lost one hive, but the other survived. We’re not giving up now. Besides, our garden produced well because of the bees we had. The investment was worth it. We had wheel barrels full of cucumbers last year.”

There are an estimated 125,000 beekeepers in the United States. The vast majority are hobbyists with less than 25 hives. The number of U.S. honey bee colonies producing honey in 2022 was 2.64 million, up 4 percent from 2021.

Bees are a lifeline for farms producing the world’s fruits, vegetables, nuts and other nutrient-rich foods. Bees pollinate billions of dollars’ worth of crops and play an essential role in the nation’s food supply. Pollinators are responsible for one in every three bites of food we eat and contribute more than $15 billion to our nation’s crop values each year.

“Back when I started beekeeping, honey was king and it was all about the gathering of the honey,” Tew said. “It was intriguing to see things flip when pollination became the new king. The money right now is in pollination. Oh, we still make honey and honey is still in demand, even though we’ve destroyed our many nectar sources. In return, this has caused a decline in honey supplies but not a decline in beekeeping opportunities.

“There are an incredible number of people and organizations that have gotten into beekeeping. At one time I addressed crowds and knew everyone in the room. Now, I don’t know anyone in the room. Despite all these issues, we’re getting new beekeepers involved.”

According to IBISWorld data, beekeeping has a good future with a revenue of $780 million expected in 2023. Though the market size between 2018-2023 fell 0.9 percent, an increase of 0.3 percent is expected for 2023.

For the past five years, the market size of the beekeeping industry in the U.S. declined faster than the economy overall. The primary negative factors affecting this industry are high imports and high competition.

IBISWorld stated there is opportunity for growth in this industry as producers of various crops, including citrus fruits and tree nuts, require bees for pollination.