Issued July 1, 2019 by the Agricultural Statistics Board of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s, National Agricultural Statistics Service.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will not collect quarterly data this July for the annual Honey Bee Colonies report, which is still scheduled for release Aug. 1 at 3 p.m. ET. The report will contain data from Jan. 1, 2018 to April 1, 2019. The Honey Bee Colonies report allows the USDA, beekeepers, and other interested parties to compare quarterly losses, additions, and movements and to analyze the data on a state-by-state basis.
Before deciding to suspend data collection, NASS reviewed its estimating programs against mission- and user-based criteria as well as the amount of time remaining in the fiscal year to meet its budget and program requirements while maintaining the strongest data in service to U.S. agriculture. The decision to suspend data collection was not made lightly but was necessary given available fiscal and program resources. NASS will continue to review its federal agricultural statistical programs using the same criteria to ensure timely, accurate, and useful statistics.
This change does not impact the annual Honey program; the latest Honey report was released May 16, 2019. All NASS reports are available available online at www.nass.usda.gov/Publications