This June 22-28 is Pollinator Week, but rather than focusing on saving the bees, industry insiders say we should instead be saving the beekeepers.
Douglas Raggio, founder of Pass the Honey and chair of the Regenerative Apiculture Working Group, and Matt Beekman, chairperson of the California Department of Food and Agriculture Apiary Board, argue that a combination of rising operational costs, flat revenues and a wave of cheap, adulterated imports is systematically squeezing American beekeepers out of existence.
According to Raggio, the solution to stabilizing the domestic pollination supply chain won’t come from government charity or technological interventions. Instead, he says it requires a market-driven merchandising shift on the grocery store floor.
Broken Mathematics of American Beekeeping
For decades, the economic foundation of American beekeeping has been undergoing a quiet erosion. Raggio traces the root of the crisis back to a structural shift in how honey is commoditized.
“Once honey got cute and squeezable, demand outran what American beekeepers could supply,” Raggio says. “Foreign honey flooded in to fill the gap, much of it cheapened with syrup until the price dropped below what it costs a U.S. beekeeper to make.”
According to data cited by Raggio, this influx of cheap imports turned liquid honey into a financial dead end for domestic producers, forcing the industry to reorient its entire business model toward pollination services. Raggio notes that by 2016, American beekeepers earned more from renting their hives to commercial farms — particularly California’s massive almond orchards — than from selling honey.
Yet, Beekman points out that even commercial pollination fees have failed to keep pace with the soaring costs of keeping a colony alive, painting a bleak picture of the industry’s current financial reality.
“Revenue is not keeping pace with expenses,” he says. “If the beekeeping industry cannot expand revenues, one can expect a significant decline in overall colony numbers and a diminished capacity to pollinate and produce food domestically.”
Raggio points out that a vast portion of the produce department is entirely dependent on managed bee colonies, highlighting that berries alone represent an annual category of more than $12 billion.
“You can’t set fruit without bees,” Raggio says. “Same goes for the avocados, the cherries and the melons. Potatoes will be fine, but a potato never carried a produce department.”
When technology or self-fertile crop varieties are floated as modern alternatives, the duo says the agricultural math still fails. Citing research from the University of California, Davis, Raggio notes that even self-fertile almond varieties require roughly one hive per acre to produce effectively. Ultimately, Raggio argues, no robot or engineered tree can replace the honeybee or the people who tend them.
Food Fraud Threat and the Un-Fakable Alternative
Compounding the financial strain is a pervasive undercurrent of international food fraud. Raggio says that honey ranks among the most heavily adulterated foods globally, primarily because liquid honey can easily be diluted with cheap, engineered sugar syrups that mimic natural sugars.
This claim is documented by international regulatory bodies. According to the U.S. Pharmacopeia Food Fraud Database, honey consistently ranks as the third-most adulterated food in the world, trailing only milk and olive oil. Furthermore, a wide-ranging investigation by the European Commission’s Anti-Fraud Office reveals that nearly 46% of tested honey imports entering the European market were suspected of being illicitly extended with cheap carbohydrate syrups derived from rice, wheat or sugar beets.
Raggio points to historical evidence of this supply-chain tampering, citing “Honeygate,” the largest food-fraud prosecution in U.S. history handled by the Department of Justice, in which millions of dollars of Chinese honey was systematically routed through third-party countries and relabeled to evade customs duties and undercut domestic pricing.
Faced with a broken international market, Raggio says trying to fix federal enforcement has proven frustrating.
“I’m nine years in on this thing, and we still can’t seem to get a line of sight as to where the true problem is,” Raggio says. “Which is why we sidestep it entirely.”
Instead of fighting fraudulent liquid imports, Raggio’s strategy centers on a product that cannot be synthetically replicated: honeycomb.
“Honeycomb can’t be faked,” Raggio says. “It’s the most unadulterated form of honey you can find.”
Because bees must physically lay the natural wax structure to contain the honey, honeycomb acts as an economic shield against foreign food fraud.
For beekeepers, shifting production toward comb honey offers microeconomic advantages.
“It requires 50% less labor,” Raggio says. “The primary driver of income for a commercial beekeeper of any size has been pulling model crops, the rent-to-bee business and then kind of selling off the liquid honey to aggregators. ... Being able to provide a beekeeper, we can pay top dollar for the comb.”
The ‘Baby Carrot’ Moment: Rebranding Comb as a Fresh Snack
If honeycomb is the economic lifeline beekeepers need, the hurdle shifts to retail execution. Traditionally, honeycomb has been treated as a slow-moving specialty item, tucked away in the center-store baking aisle or buried in the deli department.
Raggio argues this is a fundamental category misallocation based on legacy thinking.
“The perception is that honeycomb is honey, and honey is a center-store item,” Raggio says. “But nobody buys comb as a sweetener. They buy it as a snack and a garnish, which is why it belongs in produce, next to the berries and apples, not in the baking aisle beside the [squeeze honey] bears.”
To unlock the volume needed to stabilize beekeeper incomes, Raggio explains that the product required a modern retail transformation, what he calls a “baby carrot moment.”
“All of a sudden, baby carrots are everywhere because, again, now they’re portable; they’re no labor, no waste,” Raggio says. “I don’t believe anybody’s commercialized honeycomb in that manner to create that baby carrot moment.”
By breaking bulky, delicate raw frames down into individually portioned, single-serve formats retailing under $10, Raggio says honeycomb transforms from an intimidating luxury into an accessible impulse buy. According to retail data collected by his firm, this format matches how modern consumers actually use the product, with shoppers buying it for use in acai bowls, breakfast bowls, on-the-go snacking, cocktail garnishes or charcuterie pairings.
Retail Case for the Produce Department
For grocery category managers, Raggio argues that moving honeycomb to the fresh produce floor is a highly profitable business decision. Produce departments operate on strict inventory turnover and velocity metrics, where floor space is intensely competitive.
While honeycomb won’t immediately outsell high-volume staples like bananas, Raggio says that it introduces a unique profit structure to the department:
- Zero shrinkage — Unlike fresh berries or greens, honeycomb features no expiration date and suffers no moisture loss or spoilage on the shelf.
- High-margin dollars — Raggio states that conventional grocers implementing this shift are seeing single-SKU sales hit 50, 70 or 90 units a week. At a $6.99 suggested retail price, he says that translates to over $2-plus profit in the produce department on a non-expiring good.
- Incremental revenue — Because it acts as a premium snack companion rather than a baking ingredient, Raggio explains that it drives incremental sales without cannibalizing existing grocery or sweetener categories.
According to Raggio, major national retailers like Kroger and Albertsons are already proving the model, tracking double-digit growth year over year by positioning portioned honeycomb bins directly adjacent to complementary fresh fruits.
“The berries don’t go with the jam; the apples don’t go with the applesauce,” Raggio explains. “We are a seasonally harvested agricultural good — that is our designation. Move honeycomb to produce, where it belongs, and it earns its keep across the whole store.”
Ultimately, Raggio argues that saving the domestic agriculture infrastructure requires grocery buyers to re-examine their digital coding and floor layouts. By treating honeycomb as a fresh agricultural crop rather than a shelf-stable center-store commodity, retailers can secure a critical link in their own supply chain.
“Do that, and you’re not rescuing anyone; you’re keeping a supply chain you can’t afford to lose solvent,” Raggio says. “Because the bees were never the endangered species. The forgotten beekeepers are.”
