The United States is quietly experiencing the worst bee die-off in our nation’s history, with multiple pesticides present in nearly every hive researchers tested. New Jersey is one of the most complex places in the country for bees because of the unique variations in farmland, suburban, and lawn chemistry.
Going back to the summer of 2024 and early 2025, commercial beekeepers in this country lost about 62 percent of their hives. For math buffs, that’s more than 1.7 million colonies, the largest number of extinctions in U.S. history.
Long-term studies have reported that annual hive losses of more than 50% are the norm.
Scientists have always pointed to what they call the “four Ps” as the cause. These are “pesticides, pathogens, parasites, and malnutrition.” The most difficult to prove are, as you might imagine, pesticides. Until recently, my data and tests came back clean.
But that doesn’t mean pesticides weren’t present.
For years, state and federal pesticide screens continued to return the same results for collapsed hives. Negative. Undetectable. below threshold. Beekeepers watched their colonies die, but were told that the chemicals were not the problem.
Dr. Scott McCart, associate professor of pollinator health at Cornell University, had a different theory. The test did not detect pesticides because the test was not sensitive enough. Standard regulatory equipment is built with detection thresholds that are too high to detect low-dose chronic exposure. Bees are the type that don’t drop it right away, but decompose over time. These missed exposures were filed away as clean results.
McArt’s lab rebuilt the test from scratch. The new screening panel detects more than 100 different pesticides at sub-nanogram per gram levels. Less than one in a billion. After that, I actually tried using it.
What researchers discovered
USDA’s Agricultural Research Service took McArt’s method and applied it across what researchers call a multilayer matrix. Incoming pollen, bee bread, beeswax, nectar, adult bee tissue. works.
Pesticide residues were detected in nearly all hives tested. Some study sets achieved results above 98%. It’s not just one chemical substance either. Individual pollen and wax samples contained a complex mixture of neonicotinoids, fungicides, herbicides, and nest acaricides like amitraz all at once. Bees were also carrying pesticides home from farms miles away, and the residue was being picked up by wind, water, and foraging off-site, regardless of where the hive was actually located.
Why New Jersey can’t take a day off
Every spring, tens of thousands of commercial bee colonies are trucked into New Jersey. Most of it ends up in the Pine Barrens and South Jersey, where it pollinates blueberries and cranberries, two of the state’s most economically important crops. This is one of the most important pollination corridors on the entire East Coast.
McCart’s research showed that the biggest pesticide risk during flowering isn’t even pollinating the crop. Everything else is. Bees constantly forage off-site, picking up residue from nearby fields, orchards, and managed landscapes on their way back to the hive.
In New Jersey, the problem is even worse. The state is the most densely populated state in the country, and its geography reflects that. Commercial farmland in Burlington County shares fence lines with suburban backyards. Golf course. Residential areas are treated biweekly with lawn fungicides, tick sprays, and lawn chemicals. A hive parked on an organic blueberry farm in Hammonton continues to forage in neighboring plots.
For years, beekeepers in New Jersey sent samples from collapsed hives to standard laboratories and received the same answer. below threshold. A committee from Cornell University and the Department of Agriculture explains what was actually going on inside these nests.
Cocktail that no one measured
For this study, the entire question was reformulated. It never mattered whether a single pesticide was more than lethal. It’s about what happens when dozens of people show up together.
Fungicides are a good example. Regulatory agencies have largely classified them as bee-safe for many years. McCart’s findings show that fungicides can inhibit metabolic enzymes that bees use to detoxify pesticides. Mixing them together not only makes them more toxic; It multiplies. Exponentially.
In addition, these chemical mixtures interact with Varroa destruction mites and viruses transmitted by Varroa mites, such as deformed wing virus. The honey bee’s immune system is attacked from two directions at once. At this time, chronic exposure to complex chemicals is not a unique case for American honey bees. That is their daily reality.
New Jersey moved first. It wasn’t enough.
In 2022, New Jersey passed the Neonicotinoid Restriction Act, known as S1016, banning the outdoor use of neonicotinoid pesticides in non-agricultural fields. This was one of the most aggressive pollinator protection laws in the country at the time, and McCart’s research was scientific proof of exactly why it made sense. Lawn and lawn chemicals end up in bee bread and wax, along with pesticides, and states were among the first to acknowledge it.
The problem is that this law targeted one type of chemical. There are dozens of cocktails.
New Jersey’s blueberry harvest, cranberry bogs, and entire spring pollination economy depend on healthy migratory bird colonies that emerge each year. Science has finally caught up with what beekeepers here have been saying for 10 years. Tests currently exist. The bill was passed. Anyway, we just had the worst death toll in American history.
With so many substandard commercialized honey brands in grocery stores and an uncertain year ahead for bees, we don’t know what the future holds.
Michael is Editor-in-Chief of New Jersey Digest and Creative Director of X Factor Media. The Bergen County native discovered his passion for storytelling while attending Montclair State University. In addition to his work in journalism and media, Michael is also an avid novelist. Outside of the office, I enjoy kayaking, bold glasses of Nebbiolo, and the art of over-editing.
