The impact of COVID-19 on beekeepers in Texas and Louisiana

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted just about every aspect of society, including apiculture-related activities. A recent survey found that honey bee-related research has been negatively impacted by the pandemic on a global scale. However, to our knowledge, no study has yet explored how it has impacted beekeepers and their apiculture-related activities in the United States. For this reason, we conducted a survey of commercial, sideliner, and hobbyist beekeepers across Texas and Louisiana (n = 217) to determine whether and how COVID-19 impacted their beekeeping operations in 2020. Approximately half of all surveyed beekeepers answered that the COVID-19 pandemic had an overall negative impact on their beekeeping operations, while the other half reported no impact. There were differences in the types of responses among beekeeper classes, with hobbyist and sideliner beekeepers reporting more negative impacts on their beekeeping activities compared to commercial beekeepers. According to our survey data, the apiculture categories that were most negatively impacted by the pandemic were participation in beekeeper meetings, workshops, and conferences (∼75% of respondents reported a negative impact), as well as involvement in beekeeping-related programs such as outreach and mentorship opportunities (∼67%). However, for most of the other surveyed categories, the majority of beekeepers reported that the COVID-19 pandemic had no impact on their beekeeping activities/operations. This study gives us a better understanding of how apiculture has been impacted by the pandemic in the United States and how beekeepers faired in their operations during 2020.

Keywords:

• Apis mellifera
• honey bees
• beekeeping
• COVID-19
• coronavirus disease

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the Texas Beekeeper Association (TBA) and the Louisiana Beekeeper Association (LBA) for their help in distributing our survey to local beekeeping clubs in their respective states. We would also like to thank Aishwa Gohil for creating the survey flyer and Kendall Brown for creating the Google form survey. We are also indebted to Drs. Miriam Bixby and Marta Guarna, as well as Max Varela, for their valuable input, which helped us improve this manuscript. The USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing interests. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by a USDA-NIFA Pre-doctoral Fellowship to PL (award # 2019-07304), a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to AP, and Texas A&M AgriLife’s Hatch Project TEX09557.