Hives have also been approved in national forests in North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Idaho, California, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, New York, and Vermont. With each hive containing up to 60,000 pollinators, such agreements collectively allow up to 56.8 million honey bees on the Colorado Plateau alone. Demand for apiary permits on America’s public lands is growing exponentially as development and row crops devour private land migratory beekeepers once relied upon in the summer.Īccording to an analysis of thousands of documents obtained by conservation groups under the Freedom of Information Act, public land managers permitted 946 hives across five national forests in Utah and Arizona in 2020. Now, in areas that were once refuges for these species and others, native bees increasingly face competition from millions of domesticated honey bees ferried to public lands between pollinating seasons. Nearly 40 federally listed threatened or endangered species of bees, butterflies, and flower flies depend on national forest land for their survival. The specialized foragers have already suffered steep declines in part due to climate change, pesticide use, disease, and habitat loss. The 4,000 wild bee species in the United States have evolved over millions of years to pollinate plants endemic to biodiverse regions studies show they consume up to 95 percent of local available pollen. The problem, scientists and environmentalists argue, is that these hives are being permitted on public lands with almost no environmental review and despite concern about the ecological impact that industrial-sized apiaries containing non-native, domesticated honey bees can have on local wild bee populations. The cluster of honey bee colonies in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest is among thousands of hives belonging to 112 apiaries currently permitted in national forests by the U.S. “My mom named this honey snowberry - it’s our best seller.” He pulls off a glove, plunges a finger into the honeycomb and lifts it under his mask and into his mouth. “It’s a good flower year,” he says, handing me the honey, which he sells at airports and high-end department stores. He scrapes the viscous liquid into a paper cup. Darren Cox, who owns the apiary, says the forest’s mountain snowberry shrubs make the best-tasting honey.Ĭox, in a white nylon suit, elbow-length gloves and helmet covered with a veil, puffs smoke into a dove gray hive and pries out a frame coated with honey. The honey bees are guests among about 300 native bee species in Uinta-Wasatch-Cache, including metallic green sweat bees and iridescent blue mason bees, that comb meadows rich with indigo delphinium, yellow daisies, and pumpkin-colored Indian paintbrush. ![]() ![]() By Labor Day, the yard could house 5 million domesticated pollinators. The pollinators belong to a 96-hive apiary, trucked here to Logan Canyon for the summer to rest and rebuild their population, replenishing bees lost to disease and pesticides after months pollinating California’s almond groves. They are attempting to land alongside a hive, and I watch as they struggle to stand, fly into the box, and disgorge nectar to be made into honey. Honey bees heavy with pollen and nectar foraged from wildflowers on Utah’s Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest collide with tall grass and tumble to the ground.
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