#beekeepers

Saint Abigail

5th-6th C.

Feast Day: February 11

Patronage: honeybees, beekeepers health, and fertility

Saint Abigail was a Medieval Irish saint, also known as Gobnait (Irish for Abigail which means brings joy) or Deborah (meaning honeybee). She had a special relationship with bees and would care for the sick with honey and natural medicines. She is also credited with saving Ballyvourney from the plague. Abigail ministered to the people until her “soul left her body” which in Irish legend is represented by a flying bee.

Beekeepers

What an INCREDIBLE picture of bees at rest.

Did you know...

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

As they are cold-blooded, bees gain energy from the sun's heat so have to rest during the night and in cooler weather. Holding tight to the stems with their strong, jaw-like mandibles, they gradually relax – their bodies lower, their wings rest and their antennae droop – until they fall asleep, waiting for the morning to come.

Remarkably detailed image, ‘Bee line’, taken by Frank Deschandol Wildlife Photographer

📸 Wildlife Photographer of the Year

A parasitic varroa mite is visible on a dead bee in 2023 in College Park, Maryland. | Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Excerpt from the Sierra Magazine:

As the weather began to cool toward the end of 2024, Bret Adee, a beekeeper in South Dakota, discovered that his typically busy hives were no longer bustling. He was preparing to send them to California, where his bees help to pollinate almond groves. However, he was shocked to find that nearly three-quarters of his bees were gone. 

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “You feel like you've thrown your own life away.”

Adee is one of hundreds of beekeepers in the United States who lost over 60 percent of their colonies in late 2024 and early 2025. It was the nation’s worst-ever mass honeybee die-off and the second major population crash in the past two decades. The first took place in 2006–07.

Scientists from the US Department of Agriculture scrambled to find out what went wrong. Last June, the agency declared it had solved the mystery. Colonies had succumbed to viruses that were spread by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. The harmful viruses included two strains of deformed wing virus that stunt and tatter bees’ wings and shorten their lifespan.

But Sierra has learned from university researchers that the hives were also exposed to a cocktail of agricultural pesticides that may have played an important role in weakening bee health. The USDA has not yet published the pesticide data.

The scientific debate raises larger questions about the role beekeepers might be playing in the collapse, and whether commercial pesticide companies should be held accountable. It also highlights that other factors, such as climate change, are wreaking havoc in hives.

In early 2025, the USDA took samples from 113 colonies—some of which were weak and dying; others were strong—within six large commercial beekeeping operations. Researchers also examined 39 mites from five of the beekeeping operations and found that all were resistant to amitraz—a pesticide widely used by beekeepers to manage the varroa mites. The agency’s researchers concluded that amitraz applications did not effectively control the mites.

“These viruses are responsible for recent honeybee colony collapses and losses across the US,” said a USDA press statement from June 2025.

“Amitraz has been suspected of losing efficacy after decades of heavy use, and our results strengthen this claim,” wrote the USDA researchers in a study that was published in February in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

These findings have enraged beekeepers who feel that the USDA was trying to pin the blame on them for poor bee husbandry and for overusing amitraz in ways that contributed to the development of resistance in mites. If beekeepers rely just on amitraz, year after year, then the mites can more quickly develop resistance than if they switch mite treatments with other chemicals and methods. But some beekeepers who didn’t use amitraz or who alternated its use say they also lost many colonies.

Steve Ellis, a commercial beekeeper in Minnesota and president of the Pollinator Stewardship Council, an industry group, said that he finds the USDA statements “misleading and inappropriate.”