# Honey Bee Colonies¶

The main objective of this effort is to get an better idea of the amount of honey bee colonies losses over the states during the timespan of 1 year.
The second objective is finding out how much impact different stressors have on honey bee colonies.
The third aim is searching for any relations between stressors and losses.

## January-March 2018¶

The source of this data is the Report on "Honey Bee Colonies"; ISSN: 2470-993X

Released August 1, 2019, by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Agricultural Statistics Board, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Information about all NASS surveys and reports is available online at www.nass.usda.gov.

1/ January 1 colonies plus all colonies moved into that state during the quarter.
2/ Percent lost is the number of lost colonies divided by maximum colonies except for the United States, where percent lost is the number of lost colonies divided by the January 1 colonies.
3/ Defined as any surviving colony that was requeened or received new honey bees through nuc or package.
4/ Percent renovated is the number of renovated colonies divided by maximum colonies except for the United States, where percent renovated is the number of renovated colonies divided by the January 1 colonies.

January1_colonies Maximum_colonies Lost_colonies Percent_lost Added_colonies Renovated_colonies Percent_renovated
State
West Virginia 4.70e+03 8500.0 2500.0 29.0 330.0 60.0 1.0
Wisconsin 2.10e+04 29000.0 4600.0 16.0 2800.0 1600.0 6.0
Wyoming 5.50e+03 9000.0 220.0 2.0 70.0 0.0 0.0
Other States 3.82e+03 7020.0 1870.0 27.0 160.0 40.0 1.0
United States 2.64e+06 NaN 438030.0 17.0 511320.0 289200.0 11.0

#### Honey bee colonies: the TOP 15 states¶

at 1st January 2018.

['California', 'Florida', 'Texas', 'Idaho', 'Georgia', 'Oregon', 'North Dakota', 'Louisiana', 'Washington', 'Iowa', 'Minnesota', 'Montana', 'New York', 'Arizona', 'South Dakota']


Note the big increase in colonies during the Q1 in California: from 1.150.000 to 1.540.000. In February the almond trees in California have their blossom season, however the local bee population is too small for a full pollination. So they have to attract many non-local bee colonies. Bee colonies are transported from state as far as Michigan. These transports induce stress to the bees: temperature differences, fuels and vibrations. In 2019 a study found that esp. temperature differences are a factor in CCD, colony collapse disease.

Let's see if we can visualize these movements.

California has an armada of bee colonies, and this is also the case for some other southeners like Texas, FL and GA.
In the North is Idaho the top colony keeper, followed by Oregon and ND.