Honey Bee Health Coalition

The Bee Integrated Demonstration Project taught beekeepers, farmers and the program’s proponents in the Honey Bee Health Coalition a number of important lessons about colony health, best management practices (BMPs) and improved foraging habitat. But the most pressing lesson of the project, which paired farmers and beekeepers in North Dakota from 2017 through 2021, was the importance of communication.

“The drumbeat that came through loud and clear throughout the Bee Integrated Demonstration Project was that beekeepers wanted farmers to understand how important it was to their livelihoods that the farmers practiced BMPs in the field, and farmers really wanted to know that there was a real, live beekeeper who benefitted from the practices they adopted and the habitat they planted,” said Matt Mulica, facilitator of the Honey Bee Health Coalition. “It was all about communication.”

Zac Browning, a beekeeper in Jamestown, North Dakota who participated in Bee Integrated, summed it up.

“They’re trying to protect their livelihood and we’re trying to protect ours, and in situations like that, communication is all we have,” Browning noted. “When there’s relationships, then we’ve got a fighting chance.”

Each of the six North Dakota beekeepers who participated in the Bee Integrated Demonstration Project established two yards of 40 to 60 colonies each for the project—a benchmark yard in which they followed their standard practices and a BMP yard in which they adopted the full suite of the Honey Bee Health Coalition’s best management practices for colony management detailed in Best Management Practices for Hive Health. BMPs included regular hive checks for varroa and other health threats, an integrated pest management (IPM) approach to varroa management, proper application of miticides and other practices.

Meanwhile, participating farmers planted two forage habitat mixes designed by the Bee and Butterfly Habitat Fund. Forage plantings ranged from five to nearly 40 acres, and were located within one mile of the BMP yard managed by their beekeeping partner. Throughout the project, beekeepers and farmers were encouraged to stay in contact and even perform a job swap.

Four times per year, tech transfer teams from the Bee Informed Partnership thoroughly examined 10 colonies in each bee yard for varroa, diseases, colony size and more. A team from the U.S. Geological Survey Northern Prairie Research Center studied the activity of bees in the field as well as the amount, diversity and nutritional value of the pollen the bees collected. Farmers and beekeepers were surveyed twice during the project.

The surveys highlighted the motivating power of good communication. In the 2018 survey, farmers reported that identifying a partner beekeeper as a beneficiary of the habitat they provided was a critical motivation to adopt on-farm BMPs. The farmers also appreciated the results of pollen sample surveys that indicated that their efforts in establishing forage for the bees were paying off.

It was just as vital to keep beekeepers’ crew members motivated to implement hive health BMPs.

“When crews are managing thousands of hives at a time, it’s hard to ask them to slow down and adopt time-consuming practices—especially to test them on a small number of hives,” noted Mulica. “But the commitment of the beekeepers and their crews made it possible for us to learn a great deal about hive health and the value of enhanced forage.”

Mulica added that the project’s hive-checking regimen allowed Bee Informed Partnership tech transfer crews to demonstrate the validity of the alcohol wash method of counting varroa mites in the field. Hive checks revealed that BMP hives averaged slightly fewer varroa mites than benchmark hives. BMP colonies were also slightly larger than benchmark colonies, on average, in three of the four years of the project.

The U.S. Geological Survey team, led by Clint Otto, also provided insights into the effects of enhanced forage habitat. Acreage planted to pollinator forage seed mixes was visited three times more frequently than Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) fields by honey bees and eight times more frequently by native bees, according to Otto.

Pollen analysis revealed that bees in both the benchmark and BMP colonies prioritized similar plants while foraging, including Melilotus spp. (sweet clover), Brassica spp. (mustards) and Sonchus spp. (sow thistle). However, Otto noted that bees in colonies exposed to the enhanced forage habitat visited more species than those from benchmark colonies. While the planted forage attracted both honey bees and native bees, Otto and his team found that honey bees were attracted to abundant stands of blooms of the same species, while native bees favored a more diverse mix of flowers.

Understanding how different bees utilize forage could yield seed blends that minimize competition between honey bees and native species, Otto noted, and could reduce the chance of disease transmission between honey bees and their wild neighbors.

In 2021, elements of the Bee Integrated concept were adopted by beekeepers and farmers in Michigan, Iowa and Oregon.

“It was exciting to see how beekeepers and farmers in each state adopted Bee Integrated principles that fit their circumstances,” said Mulica. “For instance, fruit producers in Michigan and Oregon built closer relationships with their beekeepers, who are so vital to their crop yields. In Iowa, pollinators aren’t seen as a vital part of Corn Belt agriculture, but the concept of planting pollinator forage mixes fit right into Iowa State University’s emphasis on establishing prairie strips to protect water quality, build soil health and provide habitat for a wide range of species.”

In a series of interviews recorded on video and posted on the Bee Integrated Demonstration Project website – honeybeehealthcoalition.org/program/bee-integrated-demonstration-project/ – participants shared some of the practices they adopted.

Hive placement was a common denominator. For instance, beekeeper Dirk Olsen of Albany, Oregon, works closely with agronomists from AgriCare to locate hives on flat, grassy areas in AgriCare’s blueberry fields so his crews can safely operate their forklifts. In Hart, Michigan, orchardist Mike Van Agtmael and beekeeper Jim Hilton place hives on apple bins to raise them higher off the ground, and aggregate them in large groups to try stimulating the bees to compete with each other to maximize pollination. And outside of Sandusky, Michigan, blueberry and vegetable grower Matt Jensen and beekeeper Jamie Ostrowski have moved Ostrowski’s bees about a quarter-mile away from the farm to keep her hives clear of spray rigs and u-pick customers.

As in North Dakota, the Bee Integrated participants around the country found the greatest value in better communication. In one of the online videos, Ostrowski and Jansen described how their once-tense conversations—for years limited largely to scheduling, money, and misunderstandings about each other’s business—grew more productive when they started communicating openly about how they could collaborate to keep bees safe and improve pollination.

“I shy away from the hostile environment and I always expect a little bit of hostility,” Ostrowski confessed about calling farmers. “So each time I make that call, my stomach’s turning and I’m thinking, ‘I hope they don’t take me the wrong way, but I just need to have the conversation.’ Get past that and open the conversation. It’s worth it. It really does change everything about your business.”

For more information on the Bee Integrated Demonstration Project, including videos, BMPs and a Lessons Learned document, visit http://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/program/bee-integrated-demonstration-project/.