American beekeepers watched 39.9 percent of their managed honey bee colonies die between April 2025 and April 2026, a loss rate that matches the roughly 40 percent annual average recorded over the past decade. The figure, drawn from federal survey data and confirmed by Auburn University researchers, signals that the country’s pollination workforce is stuck in a cycle of collapse and costly replacement. Because commercial hives pollinate almonds, apples, blueberries, and dozens of other crops, the persistent die-off carries direct consequences for food production and grocery prices.
Why a 39.9 percent colony loss rate still threatens American agriculture
The 39.9 percent loss figure for April 2025 through April 2026 comes from the latest cycle of the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service quarterly survey, which tracks colony counts, losses, additions, renovations, and reported stressors for operations managing five or more colonies. That survey program, housed in the Honey Bee Colonies report series, has documented annual losses hovering near 40 percent for roughly a decade. The consistency of that number is itself the problem: beekeepers are not recovering, they are simply replacing dead colonies each spring at significant expense.
Commercial operations that truck hives from state to state for pollination contracts face the sharpest pressure. Peer-reviewed research published in Science of the Total Environment documented unusually high losses among commercial beekeepers ahead of almond pollination in early 2025. California’s almond bloom, which typically requires about two-thirds of all managed U.S. colonies, depends on hives arriving healthy after long-distance transport. When colonies collapse en route or shortly after arrival, growers scramble for replacement hives and pollination fees spike.
The American Honey Producers Association has stated publicly that sustained losses at this level threaten the long-term sustainability of the beekeeping industry, according to an Auburn summary of the latest data. That warning carries weight because commercial beekeepers already operate on thin margins, spending heavily on replacement queens, supplemental feeding, and mite treatments each year just to rebuild colony numbers before the next pollination season.
One pattern that deserves closer scrutiny is whether migratory beekeeping itself amplifies losses. Commercial operations that move colonies across multiple states expose hives to different pest populations, pesticide regimes, and climate stresses at each stop. Stationary operations of similar size may avoid some of those compounding risks. The national colony-loss survey, run by the Bee Informed Partnership and published in the Journal of Apicultural Research, already stratifies results by backyard, sideline, and commercial operation types. Adding a migration-distance variable to future federal surveys could test whether travel itself is a measurable driver of colony death, rather than just a correlate of commercial scale.
Varroa mites, viruses, and the biological evidence behind persistent losses
Varroa destructor mites remain the most frequently cited stressor in NASS quarterly data. The parasites feed on bee fat bodies and transmit a suite of viruses, including deformed wing virus, that can collapse a colony within months if left untreated. Federal surveillance through the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service tracks pathogen and parasite loads directly, complementing the self-reported loss data that beekeepers submit to NASS.
A separate open-access study indexed at the National Library screened colonies from large commercial operations that suffered severe losses in and around early 2025. Sampled hives tested positive for multiple viruses and vectors, reinforcing the connection between pathogen pressure and the die-offs that commercial beekeepers reported before almond season. The research provides biological confirmation for what beekeeper surveys have long indicated: virus loads, amplified by Varroa, are a primary mechanism of colony failure.
The Bee Informed Partnership’s peer-reviewed methodology, covering the 2020–21 and 2021–22 survey years, established the statistical framework that makes decade-long comparisons possible. That framework stratifies by operation type and calculates losses using consistent definitions of colony death, allowing researchers to distinguish seasonal winter losses from total annual attrition. The continuity of the survey design is what makes the persistent 40 percent average so credible and so alarming.
Varroa, however, is not acting alone. Beekeepers responding to federal surveys routinely cite multiple overlapping stressors: poor forage, pesticide exposure, queen failure, and extreme weather events. Colonies weakened by mites and viruses are less able to withstand nutritional gaps or temperature swings, creating a feedback loop in which each stressor magnifies the others. The result is a chronic vulnerability that shows up as the same 40 percent loss rate year after year, even as individual beekeepers adjust their management practices.
Data gaps that keep the 40 percent crisis unresolved
Several critical questions remain unanswered despite years of data collection. No primary USDA or APHIS dataset currently provides operation-level breakdowns of exact virus titers or treatment failure rates for the 2025–2026 period. Without that granularity, researchers cannot determine whether specific miticide products are losing effectiveness or whether certain regional virus strains are more lethal than others. Most surveillance still aggregates results at state or multi-state levels, which can mask localized outbreaks or management differences.
Equally absent is any direct measurement of crop yield or price impacts attributable to the 39.9 percent loss figure. Economists and agricultural analysts have long inferred pollination effects from changes in hive rental prices and from broad commodity trends, but those indirect indicators cannot isolate the role of bee mortality from other factors such as drought, fertilizer costs, or global trade disruptions. Without field-level data linking hive strength at bloom to actual yields in almonds, berries, and seed crops, policymakers are left extrapolating from models rather than reacting to measured impacts.
There are also blind spots in understanding how smaller operations respond to sustained losses. Backyard and sideline beekeepers often exit the industry quietly when losses become too expensive or emotionally draining, and their departures may not be fully captured in surveys that focus on operations managing five or more colonies. If attrition is concentrated among these smaller players, local pollination services for orchards and specialty crops could erode even if national colony counts appear stable.
Another data gap involves the costs of adaptation. Beekeepers report spending more each year on supplemental feeding, replacement queens, and labor-intensive management such as brood breaks and frequent mite monitoring. Yet there is no standardized national accounting of how those costs scale with loss rates. Without that economic layer, the 39.9 percent figure understates the true burden on the industry, which includes not only dead colonies but also the escalating investments required to keep surviving hives productive.
What a more complete picture could unlock
Closing these gaps would do more than satisfy scientific curiosity. Operation-level pathogen data could guide targeted extension programs, steering beekeepers toward treatments that still work in their region and away from chemicals to which mites have developed resistance. Detailed pollination and yield records could help growers and insurers design contracts that reflect actual risk, rather than relying on historical norms that no longer match field conditions.
Better integration of biological, economic, and management data would also clarify which interventions deliver the greatest return. For example, if longitudinal records show that operations investing heavily in mite monitoring and diversified forage consistently report lower losses, that evidence could justify public cost-share programs or private financing for those practices. Conversely, if some widely adopted management strategies show little effect on loss rates, resources could be redirected toward more promising approaches.
For now, the 39.9 percent loss rate stands as both a warning and a measure of resilience. Beekeepers have proven remarkably adept at rebuilding their herds each year, but that resilience is not limitless. Without more detailed data to pinpoint the drivers of mortality and the true costs of adaptation, the United States risks normalizing a crisis that quietly erodes the foundations of its food system. The numbers in the latest surveys are familiar; the challenge for researchers and policymakers is to move beyond counting dead colonies and toward understanding, and ultimately reducing, the forces that keep that number so high.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
