Junk Science Week — Peter Shawn Taylor: The bees are still dying. Or are they?

Junk Science Week — Peter Shawn Taylor: The bees are still dying. Or are they?




If you mentioned the “Bee Apocalypse” 50 years ago, everyone instantly knew what you meant. After escaping from an experimental facility in Brazil, by the mid-1970s aggressive Africanized honey bees were migrating towards North America, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Thought to be unstoppable, these “killer bees” were the subject of wide-spread panic, and a requisite star-heavy disaster movie — 1978’s The Swarm.
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Poster for the 1978 movie The Swarm, with an all-star cast fighting swarming killer bees, rated as one of the worst movies of all time. Photo by Warner Bros
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The killer bee migration eventually fizzled out somewhere over Texas. And since then, the meaning of the Bee Apocalypse has been turned on its head. Today, it’s no longer swarms of killer bees that pose an existential threat to humanity, but that the bees themselves are dying at an alarming rate which, as we all know, poses an existential threat to humanity.
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In 2008, the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA) first reported concern about unusually high rates of winter bee losses. At 35 per cent, the winter die-off that year was more than twice the normal 15 per cent rate of attrition. “Successive annual losses at (these) levels … are unsustainable by Canadian beekeepers and are likely to lead to decreased honey production and shortages of colonies available for pollination,” it warned.
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This set off an avalanche of dire media reports that now appear on an almost annual basis. Examples include: “Last Flight of the Honey Bee?”; “Huge Honey Bee Losses Across Canada” and “Canada’s bee colonies see worst loss in 20 years.” The villain in these stories varies. Sometimes it is disease, sometimes pesticides or climate change. The one thing that never changes is that the bees are always on the verge of collapse.
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As each story reminds us, the disappearance of bees spells doom for our food supply, given their crucial role in pollinating crops including canola, soybeans, apples, tomatoes and berries.
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This year the black-and-yellow striped Cassandras are back at work, with headlines declaring: “Scientists warn of severe honeybee losses in 2025”, “Bees Give Us Food, Pollination and Natural Medicines – and They’re Disappearing” and “The Bees are Disappearing Again.” That last example, from The New York Times in April, at least hints at the predictability of the occurrence — although it breaks new ground in adding Donald Trump and Elon Musk to the list of culprits.
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If it’s spring, the bees must be disappearing.
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It is, however, mathematically impossible for any species to be in an allegedly continuous and calamitous state of decline over nearly two decades and never actually reduce in number. For despite the steady supply of grave warnings regarding their imminent collapse, Canada’s bees are actually buzzing with life.
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According to the most recent report from CAPA, since 2007 the annual rate of winter losses in the Canadian honey bee industry has averaged 28 per cent, ranging from 15 per cent to 46 per cent; last year it was a rather high 35 per cent. Throughout this entire period, however, the number of honey bee colonies has been steadily and surprisingly on the rise.

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In 2007 there were 589,000 colonies in Canada, according to Statistics Canada; in 2024, they reached 829,000, just shy of 2021’s all-time high of 834,000. Figuring a conservative average of 50,000 bees per colony in summertime, that means there are approximately 12 billion more honey bees in Canada today than when the current Bee Apocalypse first hit.
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As for beekeepers, their numbers have also been growing consistently, and now stand at 15,430 — the most recorded since 1988, back when killer bees were still a thing. As CAPA’s report acknowledges, “the Canadian beekeeping industry has been resilient and able to grow, as proven by the overall increase in the number of bee colonies since 2007 despite the difficulties faced every winter.” How is this possible?
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As is usually the case where there’s a need to be filled, the market holds the answer.
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It is true that Canadian honey bees face a long list of threats and challenges ranging from mites and viruses to Canada’s harsh winters. It is also true that they perform a crucial service in pollinating crops, the value of which is estimated at $7 billion annually. However, this merely underscores the fact that bees are a livestock bred for a particular agricultural purpose, no different from cattle, chickens or pen-raised salmon. They are a business.
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In spite of its alleged status as an environmental totem, the honey bee isn’t even native to North America. It was first imported by European settlers for its honey-making abilities in the 1600s. Since then, it has been cultivated with deliberate commercial intent — allowing it to outcompete native pollinators such as bumble bees and butterflies even though it is poorly suited to the local winter. (This highlights the irony of all those native-plant pollinator gardens virtuously installed in neighbourhoods across Canada that end up supporting an invasive honey bee population.)
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The significance of the bee economy means that when a beehive collapses over the winter for whatever reason, beekeepers have plenty of motivation to regenerate that colony as swiftly as possible. While hives can create their own queens over time, this can be a slow process given the cold Canadian climate. The better option is to simply buy a new queen from a warmer country.
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In 2024, Canada imported 300,000 queens worth $12 million, mostly from the U.S., Italy, Australia and Chile. That works out to $40 each. In a miracle of nature, each of these new queens can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day, and each egg takes just two to three weeks to reach full maturity as a worker or drone. It is also possible to import entire “bee packages” that include a queen and 8,000 to 10,000 bees.
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As a result, even a devastating 50 per cent winter loss rate, something that has occurred only rarely in individual provinces and never nationally, isn’t necessarily fatal to any beekeeping operation. The beekeeper can purchase imported queens in April, split their existing colonies and be back in business by May or June.
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And regardless of the honey bee’s apparent difficulties with Canada’s unforgiving weather (efforts are ongoing to breed a hardier Canadian variant), there’s no shortage of bees worldwide. Earlier this year, the German statistical agency reported the global beehive count rose from 69 million in 1990 to 102 million in 2023. Another study looking back to 1961 by New Zealand researchers found the number of honey bee colonies has “nearly doubled” over this time, while honey production has “almost tripled.”
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As the New Zealand report observes, “Headlines of honey bee colony losses have given an impression of large-scale global decline of the bee population that endangers beekeeping, and that the world is on the verge of mass starvation.” Such claims, the authors deadpan, are “somewhat inaccurate.” In truth, things have never been better for bees around the world.




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Here in Canada, the ability to import queens from other countries, together with their prodigious reproductive capabilities, explains the amazing resiliency of the bee industry. Yes, bees die. Sometimes in large numbers. But — and this is the bit the other stories always ignore — they come back. Because the market needs them to come back.
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If there is a real threat to Canada’s bee population, it’s not environmental. It’s the risk that unencumbered trade in bees might somehow be disrupted by tariffs or similar bone-headed human interventions. Left on their own, bees have no problem keeping busy.