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BEEKEEPER ASSISTANCE PROVIDING BOOST TO GROWING INDUSTRY
Nearly 1,000 West Virginia beekeepers are beginning to reap the benefits of $200,000 in funding authorized last year by the State Legislature to help the apiary industry recover from drought- and freeze-related losses last year.
In late-December, the West Virginia Department of Agriculture’s (WVDA) apiary program began distributing three tanker trucks, or 120,000 pounds, of corn syrup to be used as a supplemental feed source for bee colonies this winter. The funding will also be used to help beekeepers purchase packaged bees to replace the ones that died from starvation last year, and to provide medication that will protect colonies from mite infestations.
“I am very grateful to the Legislature for the funding they provided to our beekeepers. When replacement bees are delivered later this year, the state should have 20 percent more bees than it did to start 2007,” said Commissioner of Agriculture Gus R. Douglass. “Not only will this help ensure honey production levels, it will put our beekeepers in a stronger position to use their colonies for out-of-state crop pollination, which can be more lucrative than selling honey.”
Commercial honeybees are also critical for pollination within West Virginia because bees pollinate some of the state’s most important trees, including tulip poplar, the most common timber in the state, and black cherry, the most expensive. Wild bees cannot do the job, because their numbers were decimated in the late 1980s by mites and disease, problems that still persist without the medicine and management programs WVDA provides to commercial bee colonies.
That program was critical to the rebound of the commercial honeybee industry, which by 1995 had plunged to fewer than 200 beekeepers maintaining fewer than 2,000 colonies.
In 2007, those figures stood at 960 registered beekeepers with 16,000 colonies.
“[This assistance] is a boon to the beekeeping industry,” said Marion County beekeeper Tom Kees, a former president of the West Virginia Beekeepers Association. “Several beekeepers lost half of their bees last year – some even more than that . . . getting those replacement bees is going to be a big help to them. I think we’re the envy of beekeepers across the country. They’re astounded at the help the West Virginia Legislature has given.”
The West Virginia Department of Agriculture protects plant, animal and human health through a variety of scientific, regulatory and consumer protection programs, as mandated by state law. The Commissioner of Agriculture is one of six statewide elected officials in West Virginia. Currently, Commissioner Gus R. Douglass is the longest-serving agriculture commissioner in the nation. For more information, visit www.wvagriculture.org.
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