Texas remained sixth in the nation for honey production in 2019, and is home to thousands of overwintering hives that contribute to the nation’s agricultural economy each growing season, according to Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service experts.
Molly Keck, AgriLife Extension entomologist, Bexar County, said Texas beekeeping falls into three categories – hobbyists, sideliners and commercial.
Hobbyists are backyard beekeepers who keep bees, typically less than 10 hives, to meet Texas’ agriculture exemption for property taxes and/or to produce honey for their household, to share and/or sell locally. Sideliners typically have 50-250 hives but also maintain a full-time job.
“The plight of the honeybee and beekeeping to protect populations is a part of the increasing trend of hobbyist beekeepers,” Keck said. “But around 75% of the residents who participate in our Beekeeping 101 course are doing it to get that ag exemption with the bonus being honey for themselves and to share with family and friends and maybe sell at local farmers markets.”
Commercial beekeepers are those who keep 500 colonies or more. Their livelihood depends on bee husbandry and by moving large numbers of hives around the state and nation to pollinate crops and/or produce honey.
In Texas for instance, a commercial beekeeper may deliver hives in the Rio Grande Valley to pollinate watermelon fields and move those same hives to the Texas Plains to pollinate cotton later in the growing season. Then in the summer they may move their colonies to South Dakota or North Dakota for clover honey production.
Honey production and home base
Juliana Rangel, AgriLife Research honey bee scientist in the Department of Entomology, Bryan-College Station, said Texas is home to many beekeepers because they hold bees here in winter and then take them to other states for pollination services in February and throughout the year.
Rangel said as Texas is not among the states that require apiary permitting or registration, it is difficult to keep an accurate tally of beehives, activities like queen and bee sales and honey production.
The annual U.S. Department of Agriculture honey report in March 2019 showed 132,000 honey-producing colonies in Texas. By comparison, North Dakota, the No. 1 honey-producing state, reported 550,000 colonies. Texas colonies produced 7.4 million pounds of honey in 2019, according to the USDA report. Total U.S. honey production topped 154 million pounds.
Even though the top honey-producing states are North Dakota and South Dakota, California, Florida and Minnesota, Rangel said thousands of those hives are based, or at least overwinter, in Texas as the state offers a mild winter climate for bees.
“A lot of these major producers who provide pollinator services and produce honey have a residence in Texas, but travel throughout the year before returning their bees to the state in preparation for winter,” she said.
Honey production requires nectar sources from wildflowers like bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush and almond verbena, Keck said. East Texas’ climate provides the best conditions for a long honey “flow” that typically starts in February or March and can continue until the end of the year, depending on temperatures.