Apiculture Rainfall Index Insurance: An Insurance Product for Beekeeping Operations of All Sizes

By Brittney Goodrich

The Apiculture Rainfall Index Insurance program (API) is a crop insurance product underutilized by Illinois beekeepers.  According to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates, fewer than 2% of Illinois colonies were enrolled in API in 2023. Like other Federal crop insurance programs, API is heavily subsidized.  Since 2009, API has returned an average of $2.11 in payments for each $1.00 in U.S. beekeeper-paid premium. There is no minimum number of colonies required to buy an API policy, so even small Illinois and Midwest beekeepers should consider using API as a risk management tool.

API Use in Illinois and Nationwide

API was first piloted in a few states beginning in 2009 and expanded to include all 48 contiguous states in 2017. Figure 1 displays the number of colonies enrolled in API by state in 2025. A few states stand out as having relatively large enrollment. California has over 1.4 million colonies enrolled in API, by far the largest of any state. Florida and North Dakota are the next largest states in enrollment, with approximately 532,000 and 369,000 colonies enrolled in API, respectively. Commercial beekeeping operations in the U.S. often move their colonies throughout the year in search of flowering plants for bee nutrition and honey production. Each of these states plays an important role in this migratory system, hosting large numbers of honey bee colonies at different times during the year (see farmdoc daily article from February 17, 2025).

Figure 2 displays honey bee colony populations in Illinois each year, as well as Illinois API enrollment. There are two sources of data for Illinois colony populations: the USDA honey bee colonies report and the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA). One will notice in Figure 2 that IDOA numbers are much larger than USDA estimates. The IDOA requires registration of all honey bee colonies in the state, even those operated by hobby beekeepers. USDA estimates colony populations based on surveys from beekeeping operations considered “farms.” The USDA defines a “farm” as any operation that produced and sold (or normally would have produced and sold) at least $1,000 of agricultural products in a year. Thus, many hobbyist beekeepers (particularly those with fewer than five colonies) in Illinois would not be categorized as a farm and counted as a beekeeping operation by USDA.