Vermont Business Magazine In July, the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will be collecting information about colony loss in the honey industry throughout the United States. The Quarterly Colony Loss survey will be conducted over the period of June 2021 through July 2021. This survey collects information about colony inventory and loss from more than 400 producers with honey bee colonies in the Northeastern Region of the United States.
“The information from these surveys directly impacts our region’s beekeepers and honey producers,” said King Whetstone, regional director of the NASS Northeastern Regional Field Office. “Beekeepers and producers can use the survey results when making business plans and marketing decisions. Cooperative Extensions use the data to provide needed outreach and education and State Departments and Agencies of Agriculture use the information to set insurance values,” added Whetstone.
In this survey, NASS asks participants to answer a variety of questions about their colonies. To ensure all survey participants have an opportunity to respond, NASS interviewers will contact producers who do not respond by mail or online to conduct interviews.
NASS safeguards the privacy of all respondents and publishes only aggregate data, ensuring that no individual operation or producer can be identified.
Survey results will be published in the Honey Bee Colonies report to be released on August 2, 2021. These and all NASS reports are available online at www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/. For more information, call the NASS Northeastern Regional Field Office at (800) 498-1518.
NASS is the federal statistical agency responsible for producing official data about U.S. agriculture and is committed to providing timely, accurate and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture.