Why is America's Honey Disappearing 🍯

On January 7, 2026, the United States' Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared war.

While unveiling the Trump administration’s new U.S. Dietary Guidelines, he pledged to “Make America Healthy Again,” urging Americans to cut back on processed foods and prioritize protein-rich diets. The guidelines specifically warned against packaged, prepared, and ready-to-eat foods that have been linked to rising rates of chronic disease. And at the center of the recommendations was one ingredient in particular: sugar.

"Today, our government declares a war on added sugar," Kennedy said during the White House press briefing. 

Despite growing backlash against sugar, its grip on the American diet is tighter than one might imagine.

For example, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most Americans consume about 17 teaspoons of added sugar each day — the new guidelines recommend less than 10 teaspoons. 

Interestingly, Health Secretary Kennedy himself announced an alternative to sugar in one of his X posts. 

“Raw, local honey isn’t just a sweetener, it’s medicine. It supports your immune system, soothes digestion, and delivers antioxidants straight from nature. A spoonful of honey is the ancient way to fuel and heal,” he wrote. 

Thanks to its growing "superfood" status, more Americans are turning to honey as a healthier alternative. 

In 2025, total U.S. honey consumption reached approximately 688 million pounds, with per-capita consumption averaging about 2 pounds. 

Sounds sweet, right? In reality, it isn't. That is because beneath the growing popularity of honey lies a supply chain problem. 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. honey production totaled just 116 million pounds in 2025, down 14% from the previous year and the lowest annual output recorded. 

To understand the bitter state of America's honey industry today, we first need to understand how honey came to the United States.

So let's begin there.

Honeybees, like many species, were not native to North America. But across the Atlantic, in the 17th century, honey and honeybees were already a valuable commodity. Europeans relied on honey as their primary everyday sweetener and a natural food preservative. Thanks to its natural antibacterial properties, honey was widely utilized as a medicinal product.

So, when Europeans crossed the Atlantic to settle in America, honeybees were among the many species they carried with them. And the first recorded shipment of honeybees to what is now the United States arrived in Virginia in 1622.

Soon, the species expanded rapidly. Honeybees quickly became indispensable to life in colonial America. They pollinated the European crops that settlers depended on, from apple orchards to clover fields, while their hives supplied honey for sweetening food and beeswax for candles, preservation, and other everyday necessities.

Over time, honey became more than just an agricultural commodity. When Britain imposed taxes on sugar and molasses through measures such as the Sugar Act of 1764, many colonists turned to locally produced honey as an alternative sweetener.

And then in the middle of the 19th century, a string of technological breakthroughs transformed beekeeping from a rural pastime into a commercial enterprise. For example, the introduction of movable-frame hives allowed beekeepers to remove individual combs to inspect colonies and harvest honey without destroying the hive, and with the help of the centrifugal honey extractor, they could extract honey out of the combs using centrifugal force, leaving the wax structures intact so bees could reuse them and dramatically boosting production efficiency. 

After World War I, advances in transportation transformed beekeeping into a truly mobile industry. Better roads and motorized trucks allowed beekeepers to move thousands of hives across the country, following blooming crops from state to state. What had once been a localized agricultural practice evolved into a nationwide pollination network, boosting both crop yields and honey production.

According to USDA reports, the United States had about 4.9 million managed honey bee colonies in 1944, and colony numbers climbed to a peak of 5.9 million colonies in 1947.

In 1969, the U.S. produced nearly 267 million pounds of honey—its highest level on record—during a period when domestic production overwhelmingly supplied the American honey market, and imports remained relatively limited.

Sadly, the peak marked the beginning of a long decline for the U.S. honey industry.

The first major blow to America's honey industry came not from foreign competition or changing consumer tastes, but from two microscopic parasites: the tracheal mite and the Varroa mite.

In 1984, a parasitic pest known as the tracheal mite arrived in the United States. For more than six decades, American beekeepers had operated in a relatively stable environment under the protections of the Honey Bee Act of 1922. The tracheal mite changed that. By attacking bees' respiratory systems and spreading rapidly through colonies, it triggered rising colony losses. Beekeepers began losing nearly 1 in every 11 colonies each year, pushing colony mortality to around 9% nationwide.

On the other hand, the Varroa mite originated in Asia, where it had spent thousands of years evolving alongside the Asian honeybee, because of which the bees had developed natural defenses that allowed them to coexist with the parasite. 

But when the mite reached the American shores in 1987, it found a very different host. The European honeybee, which forms the backbone of American beekeeping, had no such protections.

What followed was devastating. 

For the next two decades, Varroa mites ravaged America's bee populations. Colonies weakened, winter losses climbed, and beekeepers were forced into a constant battle to keep their hives alive. The impact was felt far beyond the apiary. As bee populations declined, honey production began to suffer, marking the beginning of a long-term downturn for the industry. 

The damage was visible in the numbers.

The United States had roughly 4 million managed honeybee colonies in 1970. By 1990, that figure had fallen to just 3 million. Honey production followed a remarkably similar trajectory — honey production fell sharply, dropping well below 200 million pounds by 1990.

However, by the end of the 1990s, beekeepers had found ways to fight back. Miticides such as Apistan and Apivar became widely used to control mite infestations, helping many operations stabilize colony losses and keep hives productive.

But just as beekeepers were learning to live with mites, another disaster was quietly brewing — one that would shake the U.S. bee industry in the 2000s.

It was the winter of 2006. Beekeepers across the United States began reporting something they had never seen before. Healthy-looking colonies were suddenly empty. The queen remained, food stores were untouched, and young bees were still present, but the worker bees had simply vanished.

What made CCD particularly alarming was that nobody could point to a single culprit. Researchers increasingly concluded that the disorder was likely the result of multiple stressors acting together, including Varroa mites, viruses, pesticide exposure, poor nutrition, and the stress of transporting hives long distances for commercial pollination. 

Whatever the cause, the impact was undeniable. The crisis pushed an already struggling industry deeper into decline. 

Between 2006 and 2011, Colony Collapse Disorder contributed to average annual honey bee colony losses of roughly 33% across the United States. In some cases, beekeepers lost a third of their hives in a single year.

The consequences quickly rippled through the honey supply chain. Fewer healthy colonies meant fewer bees available for both pollination and honey production. By 2012, U.S. honey output had fallen to just 147 million pounds — a decline of nearly 45% from the industry's 1969 peak of 267 million pounds.

The losses were severe enough to spark a nationwide response. Scientists, regulators, and beekeepers poured resources into understanding the phenomenon, while improved monitoring and hive management helped slow the worst of the decline.

To offset those losses, beekeepers added 11.1 million new colonies and rescued another 9.4 million through interventions such as requeening and colony splits between 2015 and 2022. In fact, annual colony losses improved, with the number decreasing to 4%. Over time, reports of Colony Collapse Disorder became less common, and commercial honey bee populations gradually stabilized — until it all came crashing down in 2025. 

Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. For the mites, it bred resistance. After decades of exposure to the same treatments, Varroa populations gradually evolved defenses against many of the chemicals designed to kill them.

For years, Amitraz served as one of the beekeeping industry's most reliable weapons against Varroa mites. But by 2025, signs were emerging that the parasite was adapting and went on a killing spree. 

According to the USDA, commercial beekeepers lost more than 60% of their honey bee colonies between the summer of 2024 and January 2025 — the worst losses recorded since nationwide tracking began. The collapse wiped out an estimated 1.7 million colonies and inflicted roughly $600 million in economic damage. Separately, Washington State University projected that commercial honey bee colony losses could reach between 60% and 70% in 2025.

The dwindling honey bee population had a direct impact on U.S. honey production, too. According to the USDA, honey production in the U.S. in 2025 totaled 116 million pounds, down 14% from 2024, and said it was the lowest annual output since records began in 1939. 

The downturn was particularly severe in the nation's top honey-producing states. 

Honey output in California fell 17%, while Florida saw a 12% decline. Texas posted one of the sharpest drops in the country, with production tumbling 47% year over year.

While America's honey supply has been struggling to keep up, demand has been moving in the opposite direction. Let's break down what's driving it.

While sugar is increasingly being frowned upon in the nutrition world, honey is getting a free pass thanks to its perceived health benefits. That is one reason why a new generation of consumers has welcomed honey into their diets and why more people are turning to it as a sweetener of choice.

The numbers prove this. According to the USDA's Sugar and Sweeteners Yearbook Tables, per-capita honey consumption increased from 1.6 pounds in 2023 to a record 2 pounds in 2024. 

And according to the USDA's November 2025 Honey Industry Analysis, the U.S. honey market is expected to grow from $2.21 billion in 2025 to approximately $3.21 billion by 2035, representing a compound annual growth rate of 3.8%. In other words, demand is rising just as domestic supply is under pressure.

Interestingly, the surge in demand isn't just coming from home kitchens alone; major  food and beverage brands are rapidly reformulating products to replace high-fructose corn syrup and refined sugar with honey. For example, earlier this year, McDonald’s introduced a limited-time Hot Honey menu, tapping into the growing consumer demand. 

So how is the U.S. meeting this growing demand despite declining honey production? By relying on imports, it has used this strategy for decades to bridge the gap between domestic supply and consumer demand.

Over the past 30 years, U.S. honey production has steadily declined, falling by an average of 1.4% per year, according to the USDA. At the same time, honey imports have grown by an average of 7.6% annually and have exceeded domestic production since 2005. In 2024, U.S. honey imports reached a record 562 million pounds in 2024. 

Much of that honey comes from just a handful of countries: India, Vietnam, and Argentina are the largest suppliers to the United States and collectively account for more than 71% of all U.S. honey imports.

Finally, the economics of beekeeping have also shifted away from honey production. For many commercial beekeepers, renting colonies to farmers for pollination services is far more profitable than producing honey. As a result, beekeepers increasingly prioritize pollinating crops such as California almonds, a practice that generates higher returns but often leaves colonies producing less honey.

While pollinator bees still make honey, frequent hive splitting to rebuild bee populations results in smaller, weaker colonies that typically yield less honey. According to the USDA, honey and other non-pollination activities accounted for less than 20% of beekeepers' income last year, highlighting how pollination—not honey production—has become the industry's primary business.

Today, the U.S. honey industry finds itself at a crossroads.

The immediate priority is helping beekeepers survive the current crisis. Researchers are racing to develop new tools to combat increasingly resistant Varroa mites, while industry groups are calling for greater federal funding to support bee health research, disease monitoring, and colony recovery programs.

But solving the honey shortage requires more than simply producing more honey.

That is because honey bees are far more than honey makers. They are among the most important workers in the American agricultural economy. According to the USDA, honey bees pollinate more than 100 commercial crops grown across the United States and contribute over $18 billion in agricultural value every year. From almonds and apples to blueberries, melons, and pumpkins, countless crops depend on healthy bee populations to produce reliable harvests.

In fact, experts often estimate that honey bees help produce one out of every three bites of food consumed by Americans. Without them, yields would decline, food supplies would tighten, and consumers could face higher grocery prices.

That is why the current bee crisis extends far beyond honey jars on supermarket shelves. It is ultimately a challenge to the resilience of America's food system itself.

This newsletter was written by Shyam Gowtham