USDA research points to viruses spread by pesticide-resistant mites, indicating a worrying trend
U.S. beekeepers had a disastrous winter. Between June 2024 and January 2025, a full 62% of commercial honey bee colonies in the United States died, according to an extensive survey. It was the largest die-off on record, coming on the heels of a 55% die-off the previous winter.
As soon as scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) caught wind of the record-breaking die-offs, they sprang into action—but their efforts were slowed by a series of federal funding cuts and layoffs by President Donald Trump’s administration. Now, 6 months later, USDA scientists have finally identified a culprit.
According to a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server this month, nearly all the dead colonies tested positive for bee viruses spread by parasitic mites. Alarmingly, every single one of the mites the researchers screened was resistant to amitraz, the only viable mite-specific pesticide—or miticide—of its kind left in humans’ arsenal.
It should be noted that honey bees are not native to the US so are a wholly farmed animal.
The method of fully replacing colonies is one of the issues in commercial beekeeping as the genetic diversity is very poor because there aren’t enough different suppliers.
Edit - just seen someone else has said much the same
I’m fully in agreement that the lack of diversity is a long-term issue. But it has nothing to do with monoculture cropping or unsubstantiated farmland increases. This is a problem with apiary management practices and lack of ability to deal with disease vectors.
Currently they replace queens from Australia because so far that population hasn’t been hit as hard. But shipping them that far is expensive and has a high mortality/non-viability rate.