West Virginia: New Bees Arriving in 2nd Stage of Apiary Assisitance Program

The first shipment of state-funded replacement bees arrived in West Virginia Wednesday, April 23. The shipment is intended to help state apiarists recover from prolonged drought and a late freeze that sent commercial bee numbers down two to three times the rate of typical winters.

The West Virginia Legislature passed a bill providing $200,000 for apiary assistance in the 2007 session. The program is administered by the West Virginia Department of Agriculture’s (WVDA) Marketing and Development Division.

“I am very grateful to the Legislature for the funding they provided to our beekeepers. When replacement bees are delivered, the state should have 20 percent more bees than it did to start 2007,” said Commissioner of Agriculture Gus R. Douglass. “Not only will this help ensure honey production levels, it will put our beekeepers in a stronger position to use their colonies for out-of-state crop pollination, which can be more lucrative than selling honey.”

Commercial honeybees are also critical for pollination within West Virginia because they pollinate some of the state’s most important trees, including tulip poplar, the most popular timber in the state, and black cherry, the most expensive. Wild bees cannot do the job, because their numbers were decimated in the late 1980s by mites and disease, problems that persist without the medicine and management programs WVDA provides to beekeepers.