title: The Similarity and Appropriate Usage of Three Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Datasets for Longitudinal Studies.
abstract: Honey bee (Apis mellifera L., Hymenoptera: Apidae) colonies have experienced profound fluctuations, especially declines, in the past few decades. Long-term datasets on honey bees are needed to identify the most important environmental and cultural factors associated with these changes. While a few such datasets exist, scientists have been hesitant to use some of these due to perceived shortcomings in the data. We compared data and trends for three datasets. Two come from the US Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Agricultural Statistics Board: one is the annual survey of honey-producing colonies from the Annual Bee and Honey program (ABH), and the other is colony counts from the Census of Agriculture conducted every five years. The third dataset we developed from the number of colonies registered annually by some states. We compared the long-term patterns of change in colony numbers among the datasets on a state-by-state basis. The three datasets often showed similar hive numbers and trends varied by state, with differences between datasets being greatest for those states receiving a large number of migratory colonies. Dataset comparisons provide a method to estimate the number of colonies in a state used for pollination versus honey production. Some states also had separate data for local and migratory colonies, allowing one to determine whether the migratory colonies were typically used for pollination or honey production. The Census of Agriculture should provide the most accurate long-term data on colony numbers, but only every five years.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Utah State University, 5305 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322 (highland.geo@gmail.com), highland.geo@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Highland
authors.affiliation: USDA Agricultural Research Service, Crop Production and Protection, 5601 Sunnyside Ave., George Washington Carver Center, Beltsville, MD 20705 (Rosalind.James@ars.usda.gov).
authors.forename: R R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: James
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D056630:Beekeeping / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D066264:Datasets as Topic; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D011156:Population Density; D014481:United States
keywords: Apis mellifera; Census of Agriculture data; NASS-ABH data; honey bee; state registration