Beekeepers leaving the industry

Beekeepers leaving the industry, with no one to replace them

Beekeepers keep leaving the arduous business -- and our food supply could suffer as a result.

David Coggshall remembers when he was a boy hauling bee colonies from sweet clover fields in Cocoa to cucumber patches in the Everglades and back to Central Florida in time for summer orange blossoms, which flavored the honey for his father's 3-generation-old beekeeping operation.

With more than 1,000 hives, his father's production of the 1960s was more work than one man could do, so he leaned on David when he was old enough to be of use. The work was hard, long and taxing.

"Child-labor laws being what they are, I always thought I had a federal case," said Coggshall, a Clermont Middle School principal in his 60s. "That's why I didn't go into it. Beekeeping is a very physically demanding thing."

The Coggshall operation shut down in the 1970s when Millard Coggshall, who died in 2006 at age 91, no longer had the stamina for it.


Profession in decline

The scene has been repeated across the country during the past two decades as hundreds of beekeepers leave the profession, with no one replacing them.

Experts fear that could contribute to a massive drop in U.S. food production in the coming years.

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