Winter weather predicts honey bee colony loss at the national scale

Abstract

Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) have experienced elevated rates of colony loss over the past decade. Past studies have attempted to determine what factors are behind these losses; however, few have considered the effects of environmental variables; key drivers in ecological systems. Existing investigations were conducted at local spatial scales, over small geographic areas, and failed to measure how environmental variables may influence colony loss rates differently across space. Here, we sought to determine the ability of environmental variables to explain honey bee colony winter loss rates across the contiguous U.S. over a nine-year study period, while elucidating how spatial methods produce results which differ from non-spatial approaches. To conduct this study, loss data from stationary beekeepers were obtained from the Bee Informed Partnership’s national Colony Loss and Management Survey for winters spanning from 2011 to 2019 and were aggregated by zip code. Environmental data (i.e., temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, wind speed, elevation) were obtained from PRISM, the Global Wind Atlas, and the U.S. Geological Survey, and averaged by month across the study period. Environmental variables and loss were regressed using linear and geographically weighted regressions. Results demonstrated that effects of environmental variables on colony loss varied across space, indicating that spatial models should be used when studying honey bee colony losses. Additionally, we found that increased winter colony loss rates were linked to lower November mean maximum temperatures and less February mean precipitation, thus, these two variables may be good predictors of observed winter loss rates. Finally, results also revealed that weather conditions during winter months were better predictors of winter colony loss than conditions during other months of the year. Overall, our results illustrate how environmental factors strongly impact managed honey bees and highlight the importance of regionally specific management practices to help prevent losses in the future.