A suburban keeper is on a mission to save the bees

When Willie Pilipauskas started beekeeping 20 years ago, his bee colonies brought in an average of 60 to 80 pounds of honey each year. Today, he sees about half that amount.

"There are losses every year," Pilipauskas said. "The two biggest pressures would be the parasitic mites, and this year is an excellent example of climate change. Our honey crop will probably be short because of the extreme heat and no rain."

Nationally, nearly half of the country's honeybee colonies died from April 2022 to April 2023. U.S. hives experienced their second highest death rate on record, with beekeepers losing 48% of their managed colonies, an annual bee survey found.

While state specific numbers aren't yet available, Illinois often experiences heavier losses than other states, with a 53% loss from 2021 to 2022 and a 63% loss the year prior.

Honeybees are crucial to American agriculture, with about one-third of the food eaten in the U.S. originating from crops pollinated by honeybees. Of the 4,000 bee species in the country, the European honeybee is the most common agricultural pollinator.

Battling climate change, drought and parasitic mites called varroa mites, commercial beekeepers have been compensating for the setbacks by splitting and restocking hives, finding new queens and sometimes buying "starter pack" colonies.

According to the study, "loss rates should not be interpreted as a change in population size, but are best interpreted as a mortality rate. High levels of losses do not necessarily result in a decrease in the total number of colonies managed in the United States because beekeepers can replace lost colonies throughout the year."

Pilipauskas, a Villa Park native, manages more than 500 colonies in Lake and McHenry counties. He estimated about a 30% colony loss for the most recent year, though he noted that he's a commercial beekeeper.

"The way I maintain my bees and do management is going to be a lot different from say a hobbyist or a sideliner. I tend to have more intensive management, and so the losses are going to be less," he said.

While backyard keepers typically manage fewer than 50 colonies, sideliners manage 51 to 500, and commercial keepers run over 500.

As a full-time beekeeper, Pilipauskas said he's learned to manage his bees differently over the years. He's had to be particularly vigilant in dealing with the varroa mites, which are parasites that attach to bees and transmit disease, much as ticks do to humans.

Indigenous to Asia, the mites were accidentally introduced into Florida in the late 1980s. While the Asian honeybee has natural defenses against varroa that come from evolving together over time, the European honeybee that was brought to the U.S. in the 17th century struggles against the parasite.

Varroa mites are now so common that they can be found in nearly every hive in the country.

Rather than eradication, beekeepers focus on treatment. Pilipauskas tries to source bees that have a higher natural resistance through breeding programs, and he treats the hives with organic acids about four times a year.

In tackling this year's drought - this spring was the second-driest on record statewide, and much of the state has been engulfed in a severe drought including Cook and DuPage counties - Pilipauskas occasionally feeds the bees sugar water.

That's because flowering plants aren't able to provide as much nutrition for the bees during a drought.

"​Honeybees have a very poor individual immune system. If the colony is suffering from malnutrition, the immune system of the whole colony is off," Pilipauskas said. "When it doesn't rain, the plants might bloom and you might have flowers, but the plants don't produce nectar for the bees to collect. The more stressed the plants are, the less available food there is for them."

"Let's say the plants are stressed. Then maybe the protein content of that pollen is a lot lower and less nutritionally complete than it normally would be if the plants were healthier."

With harvest season around the corner - September is the most common month for U.S. beekeepers to collect honey - it remains to be seen how much the drought will affect this year's yield.

"Every year is different. I'm assuming more environmental pressures, so we're going to try and mitigate that by doing some feeding and stuff. But we don't know till it happens," Pilipauskas said. "Being a beekeeper, there's a saying that everybody uses: 'There's always next year, right?'"

• Jenny Whidden is a climate change and environment writer working with the Daily Herald through a partnership with Report For America supported by The Nature Conservancy. To help support her work with a tax-deductible donation, see dailyherald.com/rfa.