By Heather Skinner
COBLESKILL — Lori Davis, owner of Empty Pockets Ranch, said she has noticed the silence in place of the usual buzz of bees traveling from across the road to Davis’s farmland in Spring.
Empty Pockets Ranch is this area’s go-to shop for delicious and convenient homemade meals, amazing events in their stunning sunflower field, and an impressive array of products made by several local business owners.
One such local business, Sunstruck Farms, run by Phoebe and Jerry McDonough, provides Empty Pockets Ranch with honey. Customers buy honey for all kinds of reasons. Phoebe McDonough said people use local honey to manage allergies, it is great for wound care, and because they just love it! Some cook with honey, to which McDonough advises never to let honey get over 100-110 degrees to keep the nutrients of the honey present.
With so many reasons honey is in high demand in Schoharie County, it seemed crucial to get an update on a Facebook post from the end of March where Empty Pockets Ranch shared a link to an NBC News article titled, “Scientists warn of severe honeybee losses in 2025”. Davis had also recommended stocking up on honey by saying, “I've been hearing this from all of my honey bee keeper friends. If you can get it, you may want to stock up while you can. I think what is most alarming about this is that no one knows why.”
One commenter on that Facebook post is the owner and founder of Mickle Hollow LLC, and is the beekeeper that most other beekeepers in this area go to for queens, Dean Haskin. Haskin commented that there are as high as 80 percent losses in some operations.
Many commenters brought up insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides as the cause of the damage, because they stop bees from being able to process nutrients, which eventually leads to the death of colonies.
The NBC News article cited the entomologists at Washington State University’s news release that stated, “honeybee colony losses have averaged 40% to 50% annually. But this year, a combination of nutrition deficiencies, mite infestations, viral diseases and possible pesticide exposure during the previous pollinating season led to higher losses.”
Also in the NBC News article, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture was quoted explaining that, “about 35% of the world’s food depends on pollinators.”
Professor of pollinator ecology at WSU, Brandon Hopkins, said in a statement included in the NBC News article that, “higher losses could also lead to higher costs for farmers who depend on bee colonies. I don’t want to be a fear-monger, but this level of national loss could mean increased bankruptcies amongst beekeepers. Growers of crops downstream from almonds may need to scramble if the beekeeper they’ve relied on to pollinate their apple trees, for example, isn’t in business anymore."
McDonough said they have lost all three of their bee colonies. One colony they had kept for three years. Healthy colonies can typically continue with a queen replacement every 5-7 years, according to McDonough.
Sunstruck Farm is still selling honey stock they had from last season’s surplus production. They don’t rely on only their honey sales, as McDonough also makes pottery, they offer horse boarding, have chickens, and are branching out into beeswax candles and essential oils. They are also testing growing garlic in their soil, currently.
In response to the loss of their colonies, Sunstruck Farm has set swarm traps and ordered two 5-frame groupings and a queen, and expressed confidence in the fact that bees come back pretty well and that their genetics can fight issues off naturally. McDonough agrees that pesticides are bad for bees. While no one knows the cause for sure of the current increase in losses, McDonough said that thankfully Cornell is working on surveys to figure out the answer.
In the meantime, McDonough explained what everyone can do every year that is helpful to precious bee populations who rely on dandelions and clovers. Resist mowing in Spring until flowers bloom as secondary sources for the bees. If you need to mow early in the season, it still helps if you mow high to save the dandelions and clovers for the bees in the process.
On Earth Day this year, April 22nd, the documentaries Kiss the Ground and Common Ground became viewable through Amazon Prime Video. Insights in the films were shared about the loss of bee populations, and on harmful pesticide and weed killer’s dark origin starting as chemical warfare, to then being bottled to “fight the war on pests.” Other concepts shared in the documentaries include thinking of soil more as the living thing it is due to microbes in it that need a variety of cover crops to thrive, just like our own bodies’ microbiomes. Also, regenerative farming practices and machinery are explained with intentions to help avoid another Dust Bowl and keep carbon in the ground during farming, which in turn helps with global warming damage that is attributed to the bleaching of necessary coral reefs.
Davis watched the documentaries, and if you are curious to check them out for yourself, but don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime Video, they have a corresponding book called Kiss the Ground by Josh Tickell.
While history and current statistics are looking quite alarming, there is comfort in knowing studies are in progress, there are solutions to every problem, and there is hope for the future that comes from sharing these important conversations together and learning about changes we can make now to improve the quality of our future.
On the aforementioned Facebook post, Sunstruck Farm commented, “We got this. Sometimes we need to rebuild. Mother Nature is resilient! Plus last year was a banner year- plenty of honey!”
872: Jerry and Phoebe McDonough’s Sunstruck Farm booth at the 2025 Schoharie County Maple Festival.
721: The Empty Pockets Ranch store shelf fully stocked with honey!
Bee Population Decline in Schoharie County: How We Can Help
By Heather Skinner
COBLESKILL — Lori Davis, owner of Empty Pockets Ranch, said she has noticed the silence in place of the usual buzz of bees traveling from across the road to Davis’s farmland in Spring.
Empty Pockets Ranch is this area’s go-to shop for delicious and convenient homemade meals, amazing events in their stunning sunflower field, and an impressive array of products made by several local business owners.
One such local business, Sunstruck Farms, run by Phoebe and Jerry McDonough, provides Empty Pockets Ranch with honey. Customers buy honey for all kinds of reasons. Phoebe McDonough said people use local honey to manage allergies, it is great for wound care, and because they just love it! Some cook with honey, to which McDonough advises never to let honey get over 100-110 degrees to keep the nutrients of the honey present.
With so many reasons honey is in high demand in Schoharie County, it seemed crucial to get an update on a Facebook post from the end of March where Empty Pockets Ranch shared a link to an NBC News article titled, “Scientists warn of severe honeybee losses in 2025”. Davis had also recommended stocking up on honey by saying, “I've been hearing this from all of my honey bee keeper friends. If you can get it, you may want to stock up while you can. I think what is most alarming about this is that no one knows why.”
One commenter on that Facebook post is the owner and founder of Mickle Hollow LLC, and is the beekeeper that most other beekeepers in this area go to for queens, Dean Haskin. Haskin commented that there are as high as 80 percent losses in some operations.
Many commenters brought up insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides as the cause of the damage, because they stop bees from being able to process nutrients, which eventually leads to the death of colonies.
The NBC News article cited the entomologists at Washington State University’s news release that stated, “honeybee colony losses have averaged 40% to 50% annually. But this year, a combination of nutrition deficiencies, mite infestations, viral diseases and possible pesticide exposure during the previous pollinating season led to higher losses.”
Also in the NBC News article, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture was quoted explaining that, “about 35% of the world’s food depends on pollinators.”
Professor of pollinator ecology at WSU, Brandon Hopkins, said in a statement included in the NBC News article that, “higher losses could also lead to higher costs for farmers who depend on bee colonies. I don’t want to be a fear-monger, but this level of national loss could mean increased bankruptcies amongst beekeepers. Growers of crops downstream from almonds may need to scramble if the beekeeper they’ve relied on to pollinate their apple trees, for example, isn’t in business anymore."
McDonough said they have lost all three of their bee colonies. One colony they had kept for three years. Healthy colonies can typically continue with a queen replacement every 5-7 years, according to McDonough.
Sunstruck Farm is still selling honey stock they had from last season’s surplus production. They don’t rely on only their honey sales, as McDonough also makes pottery, they offer horse boarding, have chickens, and are branching out into beeswax candles and essential oils. They are also testing growing garlic in their soil, currently.
In response to the loss of their colonies, Sunstruck Farm has set swarm traps and ordered two 5-frame groupings and a queen, and expressed confidence in the fact that bees come back pretty well and that their genetics can fight issues off naturally. McDonough agrees that pesticides are bad for bees. While no one knows the cause for sure of the current increase in losses, McDonough said that thankfully Cornell is working on surveys to figure out the answer.
In the meantime, McDonough explained what everyone can do every year that is helpful to precious bee populations who rely on dandelions and clovers. Resist mowing in Spring until flowers bloom as secondary sources for the bees. If you need to mow early in the season, it still helps if you mow high to save the dandelions and clovers for the bees in the process.
On Earth Day this year, April 22nd, the documentaries Kiss the Ground and Common Ground became viewable through Amazon Prime Video. Insights in the films were shared about the loss of bee populations, and on harmful pesticide and weed killer’s dark origin starting as chemical warfare, to then being bottled to “fight the war on pests.” Other concepts shared in the documentaries include thinking of soil more as the living thing it is due to microbes in it that need a variety of cover crops to thrive, just like our own bodies’ microbiomes. Also, regenerative farming practices and machinery are explained with intentions to help avoid another Dust Bowl and keep carbon in the ground during farming, which in turn helps with global warming damage that is attributed to the bleaching of necessary coral reefs.
Davis watched the documentaries, and if you are curious to check them out for yourself, but don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime Video, they have a corresponding book called Kiss the Ground by Josh Tickell.
While history and current statistics are looking quite alarming, there is comfort in knowing studies are in progress, there are solutions to every problem, and there is hope for the future that comes from sharing these important conversations together and learning about changes we can make now to improve the quality of our future.
On the aforementioned Facebook post, Sunstruck Farm commented, “We got this. Sometimes we need to rebuild. Mother Nature is resilient! Plus last year was a banner year- plenty of honey!”
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