Dear Beekeeper,
It’s April! That means April Fool’s, Easter, rainy weather, and the BIP Colony Loss & Management Survey!
We know it’s one of the busiest times of the year for you – you’re out catching swarms, picking up packages, and planning your next steps in the bee yard – but we hope that you can take the time to participate in the 12th Edition of the National Colony Loss and Management Survey. This year’s survey was organized in Alabama by Auburn University – we’re really excited by this!
Please take the survey now! It’s live starting NOW, and will close on April 30th.
The survey is at http://26.selectsurvey.net/beeinformed/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=LMS2018
The purpose of the Survey is to document and understand long-term honey bee colony loss trends, as well as to correlate management practices that are associated with high colony survivorship. We can’t do this without your support!
In addition to working on the Survey, in recent months we have made some exciting updates to our website. This includes many great resources that we believe will help you to better understand and manage your colonies:
- An interactive state loss map, with data for all years of our survey: https://research.beeinformed.org/geo
- The option to dynamically interact with our data for management practices by year, operation size, and state: https://research.beeinformed.org/survey
- State maps for public use from the APHIS National Survey: https://research.beeinformed.org/state_reports
- And BRAND NEW, state viral reports: https://research.beeinformed.org/state_reports/viruses
Some of you may be contacted independently by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) of the USDA to participate in their quarterly colony loss survey. We encourage all beekeepers contacted by NASS to answer both BIP and NASS surveys. But, we really need your responses here!
And now for the Fine Print (read quickly and with a serious voice):
Please don’t complete the survey more than once. Information about past Loss & Management Surveys, and the annual reports, can be found online at https://beeinformed.org.
Your participation in this research is voluntary, and your responses will be kept confidential. No personally identifiable information will be disclosed in any publication or presentation resulting from this research.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at support@beeinformed.org.
Once again thank you for your participation!
Best regards,
The Bee Informed Partnership Survey Team