Blake Shook fell in love with bees at age 12 when he won a beehive through a local scholarship program. In high school, he built his first beekeeping company. With his parents, he now owns six companies in the industry, including one that has 30,000 hives in Texas for honey and pollination, one that sells supplies for beekeepers and one that packs honey.
Now, his businesses are facing a double hit: competition from cheap imported honey and tariffs that are raising the cost of supplies, making it difficult to stay in business.
Beekeeping is just one among many industries that are supposed to be winners in President Trump’s trade war. After years of losing business to cheaper honey from overseas, the apiculture sector sought tariffs on imported honey to help it compete. Beekeepers are also fighting for more regulation and testing of honey imported at very low prices.
So far, though, Trump’s policies haven’t helped. The duties, which aren’t as high as the ones the administration has announced, have not raised prices enough for the local industry to compete. In addition, beekeepers are being hurt by tariffs on equipment they need for their businesses. Most beekeeping supplies come from overseas: extractors, bee suits and gloves from Pakistan; honey smokers from China, sugar from Mexico to feed their bees.
“We import pretty much anything that a beekeeper uses,” said Debbie Seib, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation, which works to ensure the future of the honey industry.
The honey industry is a case study in how complicated tariffs can be, and how they can backfire. While they are supposed to help producers, the industry suffers from the opposite effect. With supplies coming from around the world, tariffs become counterproductive in overcoming the challenges beekeepers are facing.
For Shook, who produces 80 to 90 pounds of honey per beehive each year, cheap imports drive beekeepers out of business. That contributes to a food insecurity crisis, he argues, because beekeepers use their hives to pollinate crops around the U.S.
“They’re dumping it into the United States at a fraction of the cost it takes to produce, and then we go out of business,” he said. “And then we don’t have bees to pollinate our domestic food supply. ”
The biggest honey exporters to the United States are Argentina, Brazil, India and Vietnam. Some countries, including India, impose their own tariffs on exports, and many are subject to so-called “anti-dumping duties” intended to protect American beekeepers.
Anti-dumping duties are extra tariffs or duties the U.S. levies when it believes foreign producers are selling products at unfairly low prices – below their domestic prices or below production cost – thus harming local producers. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, prices in March for light amber honey from countries subject to anti-dumping orders, depending on the company, averaged 95 cents a pound from Vietnam, $1.12 from India and $1.24 from Argentina. For the same type of honey, the price of locally produced honey in California and Hawaii was $1.91.
In March, the Honey Integrity Act was introduced in Congress to regulate adulterated and mislabeled honey and require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test all imported honey.
“They are trying to have a definition for honey” to protect against additives, said Ramesh Sagili, associate professor of apiculture at Oregon State University. “So once that comes, maybe the beekeepers will benefit.”
Commercial and backyard beekeepers alike highlight the need for the FDA to regulate honey. There is no government-enforced system to check that honey from other countries is “100% pure” or “100% honey” as labeled. Many honeys are diluted with sugar water or syrups to increase volume and lower costs.
“The FDA tests some of the honey that is imported into the United States to see if it’s real honey or not,” said Curtis Skene, director and secretary of the Santa Barbara Beekeepers Association, a nonprofit in California that provides resources and educational opportunities. “And that’s great, but the problem is that they only test at most, like, 15% of the honey that comes in.”
The problem for the U.S. honey industry is that tariffs aren’t driving up the price of imported honey — they are driving up the cost of the equipment that domestic producers need.
“If the tariffs go up and we’re not importing as much honey, it would help our domestic honey go up,” said Seib. “But when you’re looking at tariffs across the board, you’re looking at where beekeepers get supplies and equipment. And if we’re paying more for our supplies and equipment, then our prices have to go up for other things as well.”
Trump has repeatedly announced and then paused tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China, shaking markets and raising uncertainty among businesses. On April 2, which he called “Liberation Day,” he announced a massive package of tariffs, including a global 10% tariff and a recently announced cut rate from 145% to 30% tariff on all goods coming from China. Many of the tariffs were paused by April 9 after the bond market crashed.
On imported honey Shook said, “the tariffs on some of the other countries are so low – you know, talking like 8, 9, 10% – that it doesn’t matter. That really doesn’t help.”
But on supplies, “it’s a huge, huge hit,” he said. “When, you know, as an industry, we’ve had the worst losses in history, combined with a spike in increased costs and no government help whatsoever,” he said, referring to the massive loss of bee colonies in recent years.
After living in New York City and traveling frequently to China for work, Marina Marchese became an accidental backyard beekeeper when she moved back to her hometown in Connecticut. She knew nothing about bees, but the need to connect with new people led her to meet a neighbor who kept them. As she approached the hive, Marchese was surprised that the bees weren’t attacking her. “They were Italian bees,” she recalls her neighbor telling her. “I thought, what the heck is that, a pedigree fancy kind of bees?”
She became fascinated by them and over time became a honey educator and honey sommelier. Her honey sells for $20 a pound online, but she cannot compete with imported honey. “It’s very different,” she said, “because when honey comes to the U.S., it gets blended; it gets heated.” That process changes the raw honey into an industrial product, making it more affordable.
One key economic question that beekeepers are asking is whether targeted countries will circumvent these tariffs by transshipping – rerouting their shipments through countries subject to lower U.S. tariffs. Ten years ago, a 500% tariff was imposed on Chinese honey.
“While that effectively shut down imports from China, honey started being trans- shipped,” said Shook. “So all of a sudden, Turkey, who had never exported honey to the United States, is suddenly exporting 80 million pounds.”
U.S. honey production has sharply declined over the last three decades, partly because of competition from imports. In 1993, 231 million pounds were produced, but in 2023, domestic honey production was estimated at 139 million pounds. Over the same period, imports rose from 133.16 million pounds in 1993 to 439.5 million in 2023.
As beekeepers grapple with uncertainty and tariffs, they also worry about their businesses’ uncertain future.
“If countries are going to export that much honey into the US, then we need some sort of a floor,” said Shook. “It’s fine if it’s competitive, but at least it has to be at a price that we could afford to produce it at, so that it’s a fair market.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated that Marina Marchese’s honey was sold in farmers markets; it is only sold online. It also misstated that she lived in China, when in fact she lived in NYC and traveled frequently to China.