8/26/2011
September is National Honey Month, and Commissioner of Agriculture Gus R. Douglass is encouraging consumers to pick up some local West Virginia honey in lieu of the clover honey typically found in grocery stores.
Much of the Mountain State’s finest honey is on display at the West Virginia Honey Festival in Parkersburg August 27-28. A detailed listing of honey and honey product producers is available at
www.wvagriculture.org under the Marketing Division’s “Foods & Things” booklet.
“If you’ve never tried West Virginia honey, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by its thickness and the intensity of the flavors,” said Commissioner Douglass. “In my mind, there’s no contest at all.”
Paul Poling, State Apiarist for the West Virginia Department of Agriculture (WVDA), said the reason for the state’s uncommon honey flavors is the types of plants that West Virginia bees feed on.
Roughly 80 percent of our state is forested and flowering trees are a major food source for our bees,” said Poling. “At the same time, the bees pollinate some of our most important tree species including tulip poplar, the most popular timber in the state, and black cherry, the most expensive.
Wild bees cannot do the job, Poling added, because few if any of them remain after mites and diseases decimated their numbers in the late 1980s. It takes a robust state apiary program and hard work by individual apiarists to keep commercial bees healthy. Honeybees in the wild really don’t stand much of a chance, Poling said.
In 1995, West Virginia had fewer than 200 beekeepers maintaining fewer than 2,000 colonies. In 2010, those numbers had rebounded to 1,159 beekeepers caring for 13,147 colonies.
The state has yet to discover any sign of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which is thought to cause bees to mysteriously disappear from their hives. However, the WVDA apiary staff is staying alert for signs of CCD or any other threats to the state’s honeybees, Poling said.
Commissioner Douglass noted that it is relatively inexpensive to get into beekeeping – less than $500, generally speaking – and the growth potential for the West Virginia industry is enormous.
We don’t have much farmable land compared to many other states, but bees don’t need that,” he said. “They feed on our trees, produce honey, and can be used elsewhere to pollinate crops.”
“West Virginia beekeepers transport between 2,000 and 4,000 honeybee colonies out of the state each year as part of their commercial pollination services.
Nationally, the direct value of honeybee pollination annually to U.S. agriculture is $14.6 billion, according to a 1999 Cornell University study. The California almond crop – half of the world’s total – is entirely dependent on honeybee pollination. Numerous other crops are 90 percent dependent on honeybee pollination, including apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries and sunflowers.
Contact Information
Buddy Davidson, Communications Officer
304-558-3708; 304-541-5932 (cell)
bdavidson@ag.state.wv.us