Blake Shook became aware of the bees’ predicament in early January. Shook, the CEO of Desert Creek, a beekeeping company, was in charge of organizing the world’s biggest annual almond pollination event in California. It involves transporting almost 2 million honeybee colonies to orchards in California from all over the nation. However, Shook’s contacts were failing him this year. All of their bees had died.
The worst-ever commercial honeybee crash occurred in the United States between June 2024 and February 2025. According to a survey conducted by the nonprofit organization Project Apism, an estimated 62% of commercial colonies died. Shook and other beekeepers were having trouble meeting their contracts, so they called the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which quickly gathered pollen, wax, honey, and dead bee samples from both lost and live colonies for analysis at its five bee-research laboratories across the nation. Using its labs to identify threats to the insects, USDA has long been at the forefront of the nation’s response to honeybee die-offs.
But this year, the operation was thrown into disarray by the Trump administration’s massive federal funding cuts before the researchers could figure out what had killed the bees. Now, before it’s too late, beekeepers, farmers, and scientists are working feverishly to recover and stop the next great die-off.
For almost 20 years, honeybee colonies in the United States have been in a vulnerable position. Approximately 40% of honeybee colonies maintained by commercial and hobbyist beekeepers have perished every winter since official recordkeeping began in 2007. By producing new queens and depending on the USDA to promptly determine the cause of any given die-off so that it doesn’t occur the following year, keepers have managed to maintain a comparatively stable overall U.S. honeybee population.
The key word is quickly. As beekeepers replenish their colonies and prepare for emerging threats, it is critical to determine which killer—or, more likely, combination of killers—is to blame for the death of a colony. They must determine whether to give their bees extra food or apply chemicals to their equipment to eradicate particular bacteria, viruses, or parasites. According to Danielle Downey, the executive director of Project Apis m., “they don’t know if it’s safe to rebuild with that equipment until they have results from the samples that were taken.”
According to Downey, the USDA typically renders a decision by late March or early April following a significant winter die-off. However, the American Beekeeping Federation and a number of beekeepers informed me that they have yet to receive this year’s report. Russell Heitkam, a commercial beekeeper in Northern California, told me, “It’s a little frightening.” The organization provides financial assistance to beekeepers to help them with the costs of replenishing their stock in years with exceptionally high losses, in addition to providing its report on the die-off for that particular year. However, both Heitkam and Shook informed me that they were informed by USDA’s Farm Service Agency that they should anticipate receiving less than normal payment after applying for the funds this year. Beekeepers will have missed their opportunity to rebuild if they don’t have answers—or funds—before summer arrives.
It appears that the Department of Agriculture finds it difficult to provide timely responses. According to a press release from the university, the agency contacted Cornell University in February and requested that its bee specialists handle pesticide testing “because of government staffing cuts and the high expense involved with testing samples for pesticides.” Thanks to an anonymous donor’s $60,000 donation and the university’s existing equipment, the university was able to take on the project. According to Scott McArt, the program director of Cornell’s Dyce Lab for Honey Bee Studies, he and his colleagues are almost finished with their analysis, but before they can be released, they must submit their findings to the USDA. (A representative for the university declined to elaborate on the details of the partnership.)
It’s unclear how well-equipped USDA is to test for any additional potential killers due to widespread government cuts. “USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists are working closely with federal partners, stakeholders, and impacted parties to identify the source of this agricultural challenge,” an agency spokesperson informed me, but she did not elaborate on the specifics of that effort. The New York Times revealed in February that the Agricultural Research Service, which oversees the agency’s honeybee labs among other services, had laid off about 800 workers. Ten to twenty researchers, each with a highly specialized skill set, worked in each bee lab prior to that round of layoffs. According to a USDA bee-lab researcher who asked to remain anonymous to protect their job, about a dozen of them were let go in February; some were temporarily rehired before being put on administrative leave. As the deadline for beekeepers to rebuild draws near, any staff loss could prove crippling. The precise extent of the layoffs is still unknown, as as of this week, none of the five labs had any listings under their staff pages on their websites. According to John Ternest, a bee pollination specialist, he was abruptly fired in mid-February while assisting in the selection of environmental contaminant tests to be performed on dead colonies at the USDA’s bee-research unit in Stoneville, Mississippi.
Experts worry that if USDA labs aren’t fully staffed and funded, beekeepers won’t be able to figure out why their colonies are dying the next time a disaster occurs. Although beekeepers are happy that Cornell has stepped up this year, Katie Lee, a honeybee researcher at the University of Minnesota, told me that relying on outside labs to cover the agency’s slack “isn’t sustainable in the long run.” For starters, Cornell is among the few universities in the nation equipped to test dead colonies for pesticides. Additionally, nongovernmental organizations would find it difficult to coordinate, communicate, and respond at the same scale as USDA due to its years of data and established partnerships with beekeepers, universities, and nonprofit organizations. Furthermore, wealthy donors have not exactly been emerging from the shadows to support entomology research, with the exception of Cornell’s anonymous benefactor.
Before many American beekeepers face serious difficulties, the Department of Agriculture has a few more valuable weeks to complete its research and disburse funds. At the very least, the Trump administration is complicating the work of beekeepers at a vulnerable time. American beekeeping probably won’t end after one turbulent year, but there will be serious risks if the unrest persists. Bees pollinate over 90 commercial crops in the United States, including common crops like squash and apples. The United States would have to import more produce, which is unlikely to be inexpensive given the impending tariffs, if crop yields were even slightly reduced due to honeybee extinction or beekeepers leaving the industry.
Commercial beekeepers, the majority of whom run relatively small family businesses, are under tremendous stress as a result of the ongoing bee crisis and the need to maintain food production stability. They have had to recover from some degree of mass bee death each year for the last 20 years. It feels Sisyphean to keep going. Nathalie Steinhauer, an entomologist at Oregon State University, informed me that many commercial beekeepers are leaving the industry. According to Shook, a large number of the beekeepers he collaborates with are currently facing bankruptcy. Nevertheless, several of them intend to persevere for an additional year, hoping that this winter was an anomaly, that federal funding will level off, and that scientists will somehow discover what killed their bees so that the American food system is not also affected.
