AVA, Ill. — Despite a hive of concern about dwindling bee populations, honey production is up, and so is business related to beekeeping.

Just ask Doug and Rose Leedle of Mulkeytown in southern Illinois. They started as hobbyists and now run a shop that sells equipment, supplies and bees. They tend to 52 hives, which they are constantly splitting to create new colonies.

They were swarmed with new people interested in starting in beekeeping at the recent Southern Illinois Bee Assoc. annual Bee Field Day in Ava. More than 120 people registered for the daylong event that included hands-on demonstrations of moving a colony into a hive, building hives and harvesting honey.

“The colony collapse disease really started in 2006, but when it hit the news in 2008, we started to get busier,” Doug Leedle said, adding they now host beekeeping classes.

Rose Leedle said they’ve measured their growth with sales of 30 packs of bees with a mated queen to 320 packs this spring. The average hive produces 125 pounds of honey a year, she added.

What the Leedles are experiencing is a reflection of the growth noted in the USDA’s 2014 Honey Production report in March. National honey production in 2014 totaled 178 million pounds, which is up 19 percent over 2013’s total. And while the number of colonies is up 4 percent to 2.74 million colonies, the average yield per colony has also increased 15 percent to 65.1 pounds a year.

This growth also transfers to competitive pricing, with all honey retailing for an average of $3.82 per pound in 2013, up to $4.07 in 2014, the report stated.

If this spring’s hive reports from the Midwest turned in to the USDA are any indication, production will continue and pricing will be stable. Kentucky is an exception, where beekeepers reported hive losses ranging from 30-50 percent this spring from varroa mite damage, starvation, lack of queens and record low temperatures.

New research and responses to the varroa mite and colony collapse disorder have provided beekeepers with new approaches and attraction of more producers.

Setting up a new colony are Lyle and Randy Fuchs of Carterville. Their first bees arrive on May 14. “I garden a lot and have flowers to begin with. Bees are a great pollinator. I recently learned about the decline in bee colonies and beekeepers. I thought this would be a great way to help all around,” Lyle Fuchs said.

New beekeepers who sell honey must register their hives with the state agriculture department, and those who produce 500 gallons a year or more must process the honey at a certified commercial kitchen.

Some recent research by the University of Maryland indicates common pesticide use is not linked to colony loss. “Everyone is pointing the finger at these insecticides. If you pull up a search on the internet, that’s practically all anyone is talking about,” said Galen Dively, emeritus professor of entomology at UMD and lead author of the study.

“This paper says no, it’s not the sole cause. It contributes, but there is a bigger picture.”

During the three-year study, bees were fed insecticide-dosed pollen patties, and negative effects were noted only after reaching exposures levels four times higher than normal; severe effects occurred at 20 times exposure. The study emphasized other devastating factors could be parasites, disease, climate stress and malnutrition.

Another research development is this winter’s announcement of breeding varroa mite-resistant honeybees by a group of European beekeepers, called the Arista Bee Research Foundation. Their work has focused on selecting bees able to detect varroa mites and then “clean out” the infested brood.

This development is noteworthy because of the mites’ ability to chew through the bee’s exterior and then feed on it. Varroa mites can overcome a hive in two years.