PITTSBURGH (100.1 FM and AM 1020 KDKA) At the Sewickley Farmers’ Market, you’ll find fresh produce every Saturday, but one of the most popular offerings is the honey from Steve Repasky’s Meadow Sweet Apiaries. Yet honey lovers are likely unaware that while we’ve spent the last couple years coping with COVID, our local bee population has been stung by their own pesky pandemic.
“Varroa mites first showed up in the U.S. in 1987 and over the last 30 years, they’ve just really manipulated the health of the honeybees through the transmission of a number of viruses,” explains Repasky.
The varroa mite is a parasite that targets honeybees, transmitting more than 30 types of viruses. The problem seems to bet getting worse each year.
“It’s a pandemic in a bee sense,” Repasky says.
The most serious virus is the Deformed Wing Virus. So a victim bee may not fully develop into an adult or it might emerge with deformed wings. If the bee can’t fly, it becomes a “worthless individual in the colony and gets kicked out.”
The mites are a main reason why honeybee colonies are being reduced at a rapid rate. Here in Pennsylvania, beekeepers have been averaging about 40% loss every winter. They make up some of that population each spring, but Repasky says this pattern is not really sustainable.
When we caught up with Repasky in a field where he keeps a few dozen of his hives, he was in the middle of moving a large swarm he discovered on the limb of a large bush nearby. He estimated there were about 15,000 bees in the swarm. It was a rare find.
“I didn’t think we were gonna see this today. We just got lucky.”
He carefully clipped the limb off the bush and moved into a hive box, gently shaking off the honeybees, hoping they would follow their queen into their new home.
“The colony as a superorganism is centered around the pheromones of the queen. So if we capture the queen and she’s in the box, the rest of them are gonna be like, ‘yay, we found a home, so let’s go.’”
Repasky tries to keep his hives safe by ensuring a healthy habitat and food supply. He says the rest of us can do our part by reducing our use of pesticides.
“The overuse of pesticides by homeowners is one of the biggest things that we have issues with.”
As for the varroa mites? They’re not going away anytime soon and managing them is tricky – like trying to kill an insect that lives on an insect. As such, Pennsylvania beekeepers may never reach their goal of a natural 10%-15% annual colony loss. It’s a difficulty reality.
“Beekeeping is agriculture. So if a farmer lost half of his dairy cattle, or if we lose half of our wheatfields or half of our cornfields, it’s certainly a concern to us.”