Connecticut Department of Agriculture
M. Jodi Rell, Governor
F. Philip Prelli, Commissioner
Robert R. Pellegrino, Bureau Director
CONNECTICUT
G R O W N
Marketing & Technology Bureau, (860) 713-2503
Jessey Ina-Lee, Editor
Wednesday, April 1. 2009
More honey bees on PAge 3
honey bees And beekeePing in ConneCtiCut
Kirby C. Stafford III, Ph.D. and Kimberly A. Stoner, Ph.D.
Dept, of Entomology, The CT Agricultural Experiment Station
The honey bee, Apis mellifera L., is an insect in the Order Hy-
menoptera, which includes plant-feeding sawflies, parasitic and non-
parasitic wasps, ants, bees, and social wasps. Our familiar domesticated
honey bee is one of a number of bees in the family Apidae, which include
honey bees, bumble bees and a group of stingless bees. The economic
importance of honey bees is large, mainly because honey bees are gen-
eralists, capable of pollinating many agricultural crops. Although some
other species like alfalfa bees, bumble bees, squash bees, and mason
bees are often more efficient pollinators for specific plants, honey bees
are generally the pollinator of choice for most crops because they build
large colonies of thousands of bees that can be transported to pollinate
large tracts of commercial crops and honey bees will forage up to 2 miles
from the hive. It is estimated that honey bee pollination may account,
either directly or indirectly, for one-third of the food we eat. Managed
honey bees pollinate more than 100 commercially grown crops in North
America with a value of about $14 billion.
However, managed honey bee colonies and wild colonies in the United
States have declined in recent years. This decline has been linked to
the introduction of pests, particularly the varroa mite, Varroa destructor
(Anderson & Trueman), and other factors such as disease, exposure
to pesticides, and stress from management and nutritional issues. The
number of honey bee colonies nationally has declined from 5.9 million
in 1947 to 4.5 million in 1980 and now 2.44 million in 2008. Th