Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?

Analysis by
Staff writer|
March 29, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Oregon beekeeper Henry Storch brandishes a honey comb wrested from a honeybee colony in 2015. (Leah Nash/For the Washington Post)
11 min

Where in the unholy heck did all these bees come from?!

After almost two decades of relentless colony collapse coverage and years of grieving suspiciously clean windshields, we were stunned to run the numbers on the new Census of Agriculture (otherwise known as that wonderful time every five years where the government counts all the llamas): America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high.