Honeybees hit by Donald Trump's budget cuts

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The annual survey, which began in 2015, collects data on the number of honey bees per state, including those lost with symptoms of colony collapse syndrome, a problem that has made bees a darling of environmentalists and climate activists.

This is at least the third set of data on bees to be suspended under the current administration.

"The decision to suspend data collection was not taken lightly, but was necessary given the budgetary and programmatic resources available," according to a notice published by the National Survey of Agricultural Statistics of l & # 39; USDA. By discontinuing the survey, the USDA would not provide figures on savings achieved by the agency.

The suspension is "temporary," according to a spokeswoman for the USDA, who did not say when or if it would be taken over. This year's report, due in August, will only include partial data.

Outside groups who have criticized the administration see this initiative as another way to undermine federal research.

"This is another example of the Trump administration systematically undermining federal research on food security, agricultural productivity and the public interest," said Rebecca Boehm, economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists .

The USDA recently announced its intention to relocate key research units from Washington, DC, to Kansas City, following objections from employee unions that the changes trigger an exodus of agency experts. The movement covers researchers from the bee industry. The union representing one of the research units said that employees must decide before July 15 whether to move or not.

Tracking bee losses

The USDA survey is one of two national surveys on honey bee losses and the only one supervised by the federal government. The other survey, conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership, tracks the data longer and relies on grants, including from the USDA, to support its work. The USDA survey is considered a more statistically accurate survey because it has access to the list of all registered beekeepers in the US, but has only been collecting data since 2015.

Researchers at the USDA's Economic Research Service described the dataset as valuable and important to beekeepers and other stakeholders such as the honey industry and farmers whose crops depend on bees to pollinate them.

"We are concerned that bee honey bee losses are still high and that we are not making progress in reducing them," said Peyton Ferrier, an economist at the USDA, who is conducting research on the issue. The impact of bee health on the agricultural sector.

Bees help pollinate a third of the crops we eat, including almonds, apples, avocados and grapes, but bee populations have been steadily declining since 2006. This has alarmed not only the US United, but also Europe. Pollinators such as bees are threatened by pests such as varroa mites, widespread use of pesticides, habitat loss and the climate crisis.

In 2014, the Obama administration launched a program to address population losses of honey bees, prompting federal agencies to work for the preservation of bee populations and to prevent them from becoming infected. other pollinators.

The Trump administration did the opposite, although second-in-law Karen Pence advocated doing more to help the bees and even keeping a hive at the Vice President's.

Last year, the Trump administration overturned an Obama-era rule banning the use of neonicotinoids, a family of chemicals that is one of the main culprits behind the disorder of colony collapse, in refuges for wildlife. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency has granted 18 states "emergency" authorization to spray an insecticide considered "highly toxic" to bees.

Two other investigations have been suspended or reduced in the past year. The pollination cost survey, which shows how farmers pay bees for pollination of their crops, was suspended in 2018 and the Honey survey, which collects information on honey production, was reduced to reduce the collection of data on beekeeping operations that have fewer than five colonies.

Understand what's going on with bees

Mace Vaughan, co-director of the pollinator conservation program at Xerces Society, told CNN that he was "really disappointed" that the federal government is not committed in the long term to understanding what is happening with colonies of bees.

"We need a thermometer to determine, on a large scale, whether we are actually helping to reverse hive losses, to reverse pollinator decline," said Vaughan. "Understanding what's going on with honey bees is extremely important to get an idea of what affects pollinators in general."

He added that the loss of the USDA survey means that there is "no redundancy" in the system.

Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an entomologist who studies bee health at the University of Maryland, explained the important role that honey bees play in agriculture, adding that it is important to know the trends well. in the health of bees.

"The value of all these surveys lies in its continued use over time so you can compare the trendlines," he said.

The latest available data show that hive losses have reached their highest winter levels in the past year, according to the latest report from the Bee Informed Partnership.

Kelvin Adee, president of the American Honey Producers Association, said he hoped the break in data collection was temporary and that he understood the budgetary constraints of the USDA. But he said he hoped the USDA will resume collecting this data in the future.

"We really hope that they will get it back and that they will have that information, and if it does not, it will become a concern for us," he said. "Where are we going to get this data we can count on?"

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