Fascinating! Great article!
3
Reading that some beekeepers feed their hardworking bees with sugar water while stealing their honey made me sick. No wonder the poor things get sick and die.
7
I am a beekeeper selling honey, teaching beekeeping, making presentations, and doing structural removals of feral honey bees from human habitations. The writer of this piece is absolutely wrong about honey bees going "extinct" without their keepers. Honey bees are GENERALISTS and native bumble bees and other solitary bees are SPECIALISTS in both their food needs and habitation.
I live in CA and the average joe beek and other citizens opine often to me about "hitting the big time" by scaling up to do contract pollination. What garbage! The whole mono-crop system is teetering on a razor's edge---we currently have 22 major wildfires burning the state to the ground, thousands of homes burned this year and last year, (fire "season" is now year 'round) drought causing water wars, and MORE people moving into CA every day. The commercial pollinator industry is not a "Super Bowl" but more like a Titanic running straight for the iceberg. This quote " Without their human keepers, honeybees might have faced extinction decades ago, as some of their native counterparts are beginning to now." shows how ignorant the writer is about the resilience of Apis mellifera and the lack of research she did to write this piece. Native species of bumblebees and other solitaries are specialist for forage AND habitat. Honey bees are not. Honey bees will adapt and persist without us. This piece is the typical tripe the public thinks defines the issues.
21
Nice article on the state of beekeeping. Some may think it was written to generate pity from audience, some may think we are beeing informed how bad things got, which are not getting any better. The thought has some whining connotation to it, just like this article. But it seems it has to be, it is part of agriculture and beekepers are vastly dependant on the luck of nature. Their psyche demands it and if they wouldn't act upon it that would be a sign of their unawareness that there is a problem. After all, this is business. And like all businesses, it's tough.
And when things got tough, specialization is a key. Those beekeepers running around a country jojoing beetween polinating monocrops and harvesting honey are up to their necks. It seems like they are sitting on two chairs. It's taking a toll. Everything is suffering, starting with bees, through beekeepers to the crop owners. Not to mention all those logistics needed to service those three mains. If the renting prices are set to low, more bees will go away which will rise the price and maybe then there will be more specialized beekeepers.
Biodiversity is all about food. When bees got moved in to crop polination which is monocultural as far as the eyes can see, they are feeded from monofloral source. Imagine if you had the same food source every day. How would your body fare? Don't need to imagine, it is simple science. Don't believe it? Google it. A diverse flora is needed for bee development, as for all life forms.
3
We have one 24 year old almond tree. We have no hives but we do have plenty of lavender and rosemary planted, which the bees love. We use no sprays, no pesticides. Every year we get a bumper crop of almonds. They are a fair amount of work - pick them remove the outer shell, lay the almond with its inner shell out to dry. We don’t roast ours, just eat them raw. Now if we could just figure out how to keep the birds & occasional squirrel away.
12
Agreed that the answer I'd been waiting to hear about--the revenue one generates doing this- was casually non-answered at the end. I liked the story, but I like to see actual measures of the business side- revenue, major costs, profit, amount of work needed, etc. $1.4M JUST from almonds seems like a decent payday.
1
The almond industry is huge monetarily, but it is also huge in the amount of scarce water it requires. Money has inspired various other almond products that certainly weren't in high demand not so long ago: almond butter, almond milk, etc.
When the water dries up in the Great San Joaquin Valley the almond groves will collapse.
11
I am not a beekeeper (yet) but am reading, taking workshops, etc. in the hopes of becoming one. What seems to me to be a glaring omission in this article is any question of whether the commercial scale of these operations is contributing to the problems. Millions of bees, thousands of hives packed up, trucked hundreds of miles from agribusiness site to agribusiness site...surely this is not healthy for the bees! The stress, the close packing, the swings in available food and water sources, and then all the medicating and artificial feeding that generates...one more mess that corporatized agriculture has got us into.
27
What will save the bees - the amateur beekeepers.
4
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/movies/more-than-honey-a-documentary-...
Must-see movie, directly related to this story.
5
These "beekeepers" reap what they sew. Feed your hives glyphosate-laden corn syrup after trucking them thousands of miles and disrupting their flight patterns and foraging habits, and... guess what, they don't survive. These guys are nothing but carnies, chasing a dying industrial monoculture using a volume approach without any regard for the livelihood of their "livestock". Zero sympathy from me.
Zero sympathy also for the "almond growers" who decimate water supplies in the American West for profit alone. Both of these subspecies of "farmers" need to hang it up before the reckoning... or be forced to do so by nature itself.
23
Sigh... instead of asking themselves WHY their bees are being devastated, they just keep on doing the same old thing and expecting a different result. Of course they should be planting wildflowers everywhere! Instead they focus on short term gains at the cost of long term improvement in the health of their bees. BioDIVERSITY is the key to a healthy environment! Monoculture is the problem. Just like us, bees need variety. Plant wildflowers like crazy everywhere you can (farmers and gardeners alike). The bees will benefit and so will we. Nature knows far better than humans ever will how to create a healthy and thriving environment. It's us humans that destroy everything in their all-consuming lust for profits. And just for the record, bees aren't livestock.
36
The son of some neighbors here in Baltimore came back from college with a degree in beekeeping. Then he was off to follow his profession. This article is a rare study of a process that seems to benefit from science without being altogether governed by it. Attentiveness to the work that bees and their keepers perform is a point of entry for understanding and appreciating them.
10
Thank you for this in-depth article. Bees have fascinated me, since about age 5 I believe. I would like to see a similarly thorough article on the loss of wild bees.
14
The complexity of the beekeeping world, and it's impact on agriculture was first brought to my attention by an excellent presentation from Bee Corp. They have a hive health monitoring system that's really neat, and seems practical in helping keepers manage their hives.
https://www.thebeecorp.com
7
Underlying this article is a set of bizarre premises under which industrial agricultural proceeds. Just consider almonds. Even in California they used to be grown in orchards in mixed farming areas. In places like Iran they still are. Planting literally millions of trees of a single species right across a region is ecologically devastating. Bees are illustrative. There certainly were local bees living in the vast region of California now occupied by almond trees. There are unlikely to be any now, as once those almond trees stop flowering there's absolutely nothing around for them to eat. Conversely, "pests" that like to dine on almond trees will flourish, abated only by pesticides.
Ain't mono-crop agriculture great!
49
I remember reading about bees trucked to acres and acres of blueberry farms who died from a lack of varied diet.
3
"The almond industry’s bullish expansion is not without controversy." This is an understatement and it's shameless what some in that industry are doing: they should be held more accountable for their actions because we all feel the ripple effect of some of their questionable management practices. Bees are amazing & provide an almost essential service to feed the planet so perhaps should be protected... just saying!
28
Rather than farmers cultivating and retaining bees on site via some amount of land dedicated to year-round food for bees, they have them trucked in.
These big corporate farms could afford to have bee enclaves on their massive farms. They would rather squeeze out every penny of profit than to take the long term view.
28
Great article. This year I've paid more attention to the wild bees, especially the carpenter bees, those huge black shiny blimps which live in dead wood. For the first time I saw one of the stingless males: golden fur with green eyes. Completely different from the female.
15
Wow, phenomenal reporting by the author! It took weeks to research this unusual topic. This is why I subscribe to the NYT. Thank you!
21
Neonicotinoid pesticides, just banned for all outdoor agriculture in the EU, and soon to suffer the same well-deserved fate in Canada, should have at least gotten a mention in this otherwise well researched and written article. These systemic pesticides are decimating all pollinator species, and showing signs of human health impacts as well, and must be reigned in. Unfortunately, the Massachusetts House of Representatives' leadership just killed an extremely well supported bill - two thirds of the legislature co-sponsored it, among others - to take these chemicals out of the hands of homeowners in favor of licensed applicators only. In doing so, Mass declined to follow Maryland and Connecticut down that sensible path. Ironically, the Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation, whose members depend on bees, and who are already licensed applicators, were the primary opponents of the bill. Sadly, voting against your own self-interest seems to be an epidemic growing at least as fast as varroa mites.
36
This great article and wonderful accompanying photographs is why I subscribe to the New York Times.
18
I really admire people who can do this sort of work. Just looking at the photograph of the keepers surrounded by a landscape full of bees makes me nervous or shall I say, break out in hives.
10
Johnston has a $14 million business shipping bees. He's not hurting. In fact, in 2016 he is covered by a Colorado news outlet, in which he claims that bees are safer than ever. So, his story changes depending upon whether he's speaking to urban media, like the NYT. Again, urban media fall for the romance of the "family farmer" and fail to vet the farmers or their claims. In 2018, the Federal government began a grant program to increase hive establishment. Grants are $10000 to $100000, and the beekeeper must have an income limit of under $1,000,000. Also, re the mite problem: were mites a major bee killer prior to the practice of monoculture feeding in almond orchards? Poor nutrition due to the monoculture environment is the basis of the bee's vulnerabilities. Urban folks dont know what 100 continuous miles of almonds orchards look like (north of Sacramento). The bees are given no choice.
27
When you drive 100 miles and as far as the eye can see there are only almond trees, you know something is wrong. Mono-culture of this level is unsustainable. Quote the article: "This thing is going to collapse like a crater."
Soon CA will have another 18,000 square miles of arid wasteland.
38
It wouldn't be possible without billions of gallons of water either. Water that needs to be diverted there.
29
Super article. As a city slicker this was definitely revealing to me. Thanks
6
Honey bees' "very existence" is not in peril. They are a non-native , domesticated animal. Many of the diseases and pests are the direct result of beekeepers pushing their bees beyond reasonable limits. Because beekeepers treated all of their hives for diseases and pests whether they needed it or not, resistance quickly developed. Oh, those poor poor beekeepers.
4
There are so many facets to this problem and North American honey bees ARE actually in peril. As indicated in the article and comments, monoculture and the stress on bees used in pollination contracts is not helping. Neither is the inevitable clearing of wooded areas for land development as we become a more populous country and the building of warehouses to store all of the cheap products that we can't stop buying, which also hurts birds, butterflies, flora and fauna.
Then there's ignorance, willfull or otherwise. You are correct that honey bees are not native to the Americas, but, oh, how we have benefitted from their pollination superpowers and, oh, how we will miss it as die off continues.
I'm only a hobbyist, but I wouldn't blame commmerical beekeepers for all of this.
12
Where would we be without Bees? Serious trouble. she need the Bees!
3
No mention of Stewart and Lynda Resnick? - owners of one of the biggest privately held agribusiness corporations in the United States – Roll International which include Paramount Farming, the largest grower and processor of almonds and pistachios in the world; Paramount Citrus; Fiji Water; Suterra, a pesticide brand; Teleflora; PomWonderful; and the Neptune Pacific Line, a global shipping company.
A large part of the Resnicks’ billion-dollar business entails growing more than 5 million trees in the cracked and dry Westside soil of the San Joaquin Valley, where rain doesn’t fall and rivers do not flow. Kern County receives only five inches of rainfall a year and most of its aquifers have been depleted, contaminated, or both. None of Paramount’s pistachio or almond trees would survive without the daily application of irrigation water pumped through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and down the length of the California Aqueduct.
41
And then we have this incredibly DUMB, quasi-criminal act -
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/zika-spraying-kills-millions-of-bees/
As far as I know, nobody was punished for this horror story.
9
If all the bees and insects go away, then we'll be free of the biggest pest on the planet, us.
20
I suggest stop feeding them sugar water and let them eat their own honey. I'm guess the bee's health would improve.
12
Charming story, but the truth about almonds in California has changed in recent years. As the price of almonds has gone up and the market become global, giant investor groups have put money into millions and millions more trees. These aren't "farmers" in any classical sense, they are Wall Street types. And they steal water.
California has gotten by so far with few restrictions on the pumping of groundwater. Farmers -- real farmers -- could plant different crops depending on the availability of water, or even not plant at all in dry years. Trees need water all the time, you can't take a break. So these almost "farms" just pump and pump and are sucking dry an aquifer that will never recover to matter how much it rains in the future.
And the money, the profits? They go out of state. Not always, of course, but to a far greater degree than in the past. So let's not romanticize almonds in California. In typical Wall Street fashion, investors are willing to kill a golden goose for short-term profits.
47
As a Californian who is very careful with water usage, it is very difficult for me to feel sympathy for a group that is helping to suck the state dry. That said, interesting article.
20
As a former (sedentary) beekeeper and Californian, I have always been impressed by how brutally commercial beekeepers treat their animals and amazed that the bees keep working for them.
Anyone who has traveled I-5 will have seen the bees being slammed around, their hives dumped into trucks which are then driven at high speed to the next destination, where the same process is repeated.
32
Most readers have no idea of the size magnitude of the California almond orchards. I was shocke when I saw them in the documentary "More Than Honey".
As a 5-year hobby beekeeper, I've learned (from the experts, not media re-hash) that the danger to honeybees is multi-factorial: loss of habitat, monocropping, pesticides, introduced parasites. Even the size of a commercial honey bee hive isn't really natural.
Monocrop planting has created the demand for migratory beekeeping, and there's nothing natural, or good for the bees, in either. My personal bias is a feeling that all works better when kept "local". Most of the almonds are raised for export, and importe Chinese honey - used for industrial sugar coatings, etc - highly filtere (so you can't determine origin by pollen content, and then, you never know what it's been cut with. Support your local "beeks".
39
@Mary Ann
I'm with you on the value of local honey.
Chinese dairy guys poisoned their own kids with melamine to make ten cents more on a gallon of milk.
Can you imagine what they'll feed to our kids?
15
I live and breathe in the native bee world. Most people don't realize that there are superior pollinating native bees due to how the pollen is carried dry and loose on the hairy bodies vs. sticky on hind legs like the honey bee.
Nature does not work well with monoculture. Disease, pests, viruses, and fungi all work against that environment. Humans must use chemicals against to fight what they caused.
Step back and ask "Why are the honey bees failing?" The root cause seems to be humans using the bee not how it should be used... Honey bees, when they swarm, relocate about 1/2 mile away. Why? Probably due to foraging requirements and disease/pest evolution.
My company uses native bees in yards and fields. We find customers with too much food... Yet it's not that easy. Working "with" nature rather than against isn't easy even in organic crops. We're working with researchers to understand characteristics of each species we use.
We also have a long range program to find the native bees in each state and micro-region. Those bees should be used in those specific areas only. Lower carbon footprint, more acclimated to a climate, less disease spreading, etc. We call this the Native Bee Network which started this year hunting for these bees. It will be a 20 year program.
We're not looking to get rid of honey bees, but augment alongside them. Biodiversity is how nature works best.
54
@Crown Bees ~ I acquired a very small back yard in the Willamette Valley two years ago. I have added yards and yards of compost to the clay soil and am planting mostly Native flowers and shrubs as a pollinator garden. Bees are my favorite pollinator.
I am astounded by the variety of Native bees which I see in the first year of actual flower production. I see lots and lots of the usual Bumble Bees, Honey Bees, and Wasps, but also many other bees which are unfamiliar to me. I was weeding one day, on my hands and knees pulling up the weed Purslane, when I noticed that its tiny yellow flowers were being visited by tiny little bees. I have no idea what they were but I've decided to leave the Purslane intact from now on. It's actually a nice little ground cover and draws these beautiful little bees.
I'm happy to say that my grass is mostly clover and chamomile. This fall when it cools down I will bring in a thin layer of compost to cover my small plot of grass and add a mix of Native wildflowers to it.
I don't grow my own vegetables. We have a wonderful Farmer's Market here in Corvallis with lots of lovely organic fruits and vegetables readily available.
I garden for the Native pollinators and find it tremendously enjoyable.
50
You can eat purslane too
4
@Fata Padgitt Purslane is good added to salad.
1
"Well, that’s the problem with beekeepers; we don’t crunch the numbers. We just put everything back in the business and hope we’ll be here next year.”
This speaks to a lack of financial discipline. If you are taking in 1.5M and plowing everything back into a business where your main product dies at a 28% clip, then you either need to cut costs or raise prices.
5
@neal Excellent point! Like any business, you have to track your numbers and have a plan.
1
@neal I found that comment to be very disingenuous given the complexity of the operations described. That seemed to me a quick response to avoid answering the question. I know of no business that doesn’t know it’s income/cost ratio and plans based on that and tracks their investment in the business as a cost.
8
Our lawns are a huge waste of resource on the planet. Just empty space filled with grass. Let's shift to growing our own food, organically. Instead of hiring landscapers to mow our lawns, let's hire young farmers to maintain our homesteads. A new business model that benefits all (plus engineering systems that optimize water usage without waste). Honey bees fly a radius of 3 miles from their hive. Support neighborhood beekeepers. The industrial approach to food is not the answer. And let's eat less almond products.
76
@Mabb
Your comments to this fine article made my day. Living on a one-acre lot since 1962, I have never planted a "lawn." Surrounded by fields, I simply mowed to create the yard/garden. I keep it trim to look neat, but there is always something blooming in my "lawn." During summer droughts, it is unusually green. I work on developing beds of wildflowers as I create habitats for native pollinators. I started this project as each year I saw dwindling numbers of bumblebees and other native pollinators. For a few years I saw little to encourage my efforts as I am now surrounded by mcmansions that flash little flags announcing the visit of the poison-in-the-grass man. This year, however, I have seen more native bees and also Monarch butterflies as milkweed at the back of the border propagates.
We need similar articles and comments to raise awareness of this critical issue.
65
@Mabb
Amen Mabb! I can see future humans studying the decline of the US empire puzzling mightily over the enormous resources - water, chemicals, fossil fuels, biodiversity, time - that we gave away in order to have miles and miles of lawns. I imagine it will be seriously difficult to explain.
13
@Mabb:
And don't forget about all those green golf courses in the desert! After all, man has to get his exercise.
2
While the water requirement for almonds is true (1 gallon per nut), context is sorely lacking. Almond water use is roughly the same as other plant-based foods, but meat is at least 10-fold more water-intensive. Each of us needs to become less carnivorous
30
@Bob Almonds are known as the most water thirsty of the nut crops. Yet they are being grown in some of the lower water-availability locations in the California Central Valley. Rainfall in some of those areas is quite low.
As the water levels in the aquifers continue to drop (from being overdrawn), about 80 feet since the 1950's in eastern San Joaquin County, little, if any attention has been paid to that situation until now.
And the population of the Central Valley is expected to double by 2060, putting additional stress on the already inadequate water supply in those areas.
Why are almonds the preferred planting in those areas? Because it's a pretty profitable crop compared to most alternative crops.
We humans are just a little short-sighted.
38
While mites can destroy a hive, they are not the biggest issue facing beekeepers today. We've lived with and adapted our beekeeping practices to control Varroa since the '90s,
Many commercial beekeepers in Canada especially here in Ontario blame current unsustainable losses on systemic pesticide. Neonicotinoid pesticides overused on corn and soy cause spring dwindling, queen failure and depopulated hives allowing mites to take over. Neonics are banned in Europe. Here in Canada in key corn and soy growing provinces of Ontario and Quebec the prophylactic use of neonics as seed treatments was deemed unsustainable. Ontario and Quebec have both passed legislation to reduce the use of neonics which had been used on 99% of corn when crop specialists found that only 15% of acreage actually needed pest protection. Yesterday the government of Canada announced proposals to phase out all three neonic molecules due to their negative impact on aquatic invertebrates from neonics translocating from farmers fields to rivers and streams. Climate change with wild swings in weather patters, loss of forage to cash crops and systemic pesticide use are stressing wild bees and honey bees. No wonder Ontario beekeepers had overwinter losses last year of 46%, the highest in Canada.
While pesticide exposure is not the only stressor it is one we can control Remember as beekeepers we can manage, at a cost, our colony numbers ,but wild bees and bumble bees simply die off.
70
As an intermittent beekeeper, I'm very surprised that this article doesn't discuss how the dumping of cheap Chinese honey in the US has hurt beekeepers (and other sectors of the agricultural economy that rely on bees). See, for example, a NYTimes article of January 19, 2015. So, while I disagree with the administration's whole approach to tariffs, the issue of Chinese honey actually might warrant tariffs (although it will be complex).
26
"And always reserve some of the honey that bees produce to feed them come winter."
Better yet, steal none of their honey. Taking their honey and replacing it with high-fructose corn syrup, produced with high levels of pesticides and other chemicals, is not a formula for bee health.
Let bees eat their own food all the time. Humans can eat some other form of sugar, if they want to.
41
@JustInsideBeltway If we want bees, we need beekeepers. If we want beekeepers, we need to make sure the business is economically viable. Without honey, beekeeping becomes impossible economically, even with the pollination fees. Leaving some honey and supplementing with sugar water is a reasonable compromise. One thing I know for sure: beekeeping is a ton of work and without beekeepers, the bee populations would totally collapse and we wouldn't have apples, cherries, and many of the other foods we all rely on.
15
@Patricia Maurice
Supplementing with sugar after taking honey is not a compromise; it is one more thing that is weakening the bees. And beekeepers are certainly not more important than bees themselves.
2
@JustInsideBeltway The general practice is to provide sugar water for a newly established hive while they get their wax combs and honey production going. Once they have enough honey, you remove the sugar water. The honey from the bottom two boxes is never harvested, as that supply belongs to the bees and is where the queen lays her many eggs. Bees are so industrious, they produce way more honey than they need. Only the excess honey in the top boxes is used by the beekeeper.
17
It was news to a beekeeper that he needed to leave more honey, bees natural food, for them to over winter? Yhe keepers feed them unnatural food and then they drag the bees all over the country rather than letting them rest? No wonder the bees are stressed.
Maybe the secret is to keep bees closer to where they’re needed and plant for their year round needs. Or maybe grow almonds in other parts of the country. I could be wrong, but I think anywhere a peach grows, an almond can grow.
34
@GiGi
These are medium to large scale farm operations that need flat land to operate efficiently. There's abundant flat land in the valley but little water.
7
One small paragraph mentions water, and barely highlights the need to conserve it in a state like California, where the agriculture industry is drawing down water supplies to such a degree land subsidence is common, wells are being drilled deeper and deeper to compete for water--and for what?
To back up an industry of almonds and avocados, which we all love, but are not long term investments the state can afford to make.
Almonds are water hogs and we need less almond crops, not more, moving forward. Don't get me wrong: I love almonds. But they are not sustainable, nor is the long term growth of the almond and nut industry.
It's a shame this article completely bypassed the most germane part of this discussion: without water access, no plants. Without bees, no food.
But without almonds, at least we might have a fighting chance to save both bees and water, without which our species will not survive.
104
@Ana Jones I am 100% with you! The water thievery & backroom deals that have taken place in CA is shortsighted, purely financially motivated and borderline criminal! The priority needs to be in lives (citizens, bees) not profits (nut industry).
6
@Ana Jones -- Almonds may be water hogs by comparison to some things, but if you compare almond milk to cows milk, almonds are downright thrifty. It takes 23 gallons of water to produce a glass of almond milk, but it takes 30 gallons of water to produce one glass of cows milk.
@Ana Jones
It struck me that the article was saying that without the almonds, the economics keeping and transporting bees was pretty poor. I recognize the conflicts.
I have lost many hives to various problems during my 15 years as a beekeeper. I now have two thriving hives, one installed last year, and the other this spring. I have finally figured out that purchasing bees and queens reared in the southeast in the past was my mistake. My bees and queens now come from an apiary in northern New York state. They are tougher and used to northern winters. And they work harder to prepare for the rigors of hard winters.
30
@paul
Let us know how the hives are doing next year.
Are the bees genetically the same?? You imply not so.
@paulAren't many of the northern US bees actually from Eastern Europe? They resist mites better and are overall more aggressive.
@paul
After failing repeatedly with Georgian bees, I went to NUCs of Russian and Canadian bee crosses and they do a lot better. I think it's more than just the climate. Genetically they aren't quite the same. My curiosity now is whether there are methods for keeping the hives near my buildings a touch warm using heating pads for germination. I'm unsure as to how to go after that at this point. It seems they can take cold but moisture wil kill them.
2
And are these farmers / beekeepers contacting the White House, Commerce Department, EPA & Congress to let them know how the government’s bad decisions are affecting their livelihood?
28
The annual Almond pollination is an invitation to spread disease.
Almonds are a disaster crop ...for water, for bees.
Industrial scale farming is a nutritional disaster for bees and for people.
Save the bees. Boycott Almonds. Buy local honey.
91
@Louis
Industrial farming is why there are so many people on the planet. The question as to the capacity of the planet to support people goes back 200 years. Check Malthus.
2
@Louis J
I hear what you are saying but it's not specific to almonds. It is, as you mention, industrial farming that creates so much collateral damage. In reality, I think we'd all have to boycott a lot of crops, and spend many times what we do now on food, to achieve real change.
5
As a hobbyist beekeeper (currently with just three hives) I can't imagine the issues and plain hard work facing commercial beekeepers, especially those who truck their bees for pollination.
But I know one thing: Trump has probably never spent a minute working with bees and doesn't care a whit about beekeepers ... or almond farmers for that mattter.
57
As an urban beekeeper, now with a volunteer hive, I've long noticed the effect on my garden when I have an active hive. But we should know that there are more pollinators than just the apis mellifera. Bumble bees, wasps, beetles, moths...there are many and there is no greater impact on all of them than pesticides. Please be aware about what we spray on our plants and the insecticides we use in and around the house.
106
@gary wilson
Bumble bees, wasps, beetles, moths...
...the wind...
1
Started keeping bees—two hives—last year. It’s a fun and rewarding and challenging hobby, but not without some pretty significant expenses. Keeping bees at the industrial scale these beekeepers (bless them) do is bizarre. Trucking bees around the country to pollinate crops in order to meet the needs of the industrial agriculture economy is simply unsustainable in the long run.
24
@B. Not too sure why you think its unsustainable. Sure beekeepers are experiencing more hive losses but there is still a market for almonds and that demand will be met with a supply of beekeepers.
1
We had a lawn full of white clover covering 1/2 acre and not a honey bee in sight. No fruit on our peach or apple trees this season. Not sure if this is a one off or a trend.
16
@robert In Boston, we have a yard full of roses, daisies, clover, zinnias, a crabapple tree, and a border full of northeastern native wild flowers ordered as a mix from Fedco in Maine. We did not have to buy bees; we grew a variety of pollinator-friendly plants, and the collection of wasps, yellowjackets, mason bees, and leafcutter bees came after 1 full summer of these plantings. Since then, we've had no trouble keeping squash, melons, and bees pollinated. Maybe think about adding some more variety to your plantings?
19
@robert Me too. No takers on my clover for several years running. This year some honey bees dropped in for water at little ornamental pond mid summer, so I figure someone around here now has a hobby hive. But my blueberry bushes get pollinated every year , probably by the native carpenter bees that are demolishing a trellis in the yard.
6
@lou A little known honey bee fact: they have preferences and priorities (relative to nectar quantities) and often will ignore certain sources until their preferred sources run out.
1
"...the central valley, an 18,000-square-mile expanse of California that begins at the stretch of highway known as the Grapevine just south of Bakersfield and reaches north to the foothills of the Cascades. "
News to me that the Cascade Mountains extend south to northern California, though apparently to geologists this is the common usage?
California's central valley extends a bit north of Redding and ends in what are known as "the Trinity Alps" by Californians. Almonds are grown only in the extreme southern end -- none of this geography and appellation is relevant to the topic.
5
Almonds are grown at least as far north as Orland, which is 2/3 of the way up the Central Valley. It used to be somewhat risky to grow them north of the Delta but now there are millions of acres in what locals called "the Sacramento Valley". Not just the extreme south.
By the way...to all the haters, the Sacramento Valley gets 4x or more the amount of rain that areas further south get, as well as having a more sustainable groundwater resource. The almonds here get as much of half their annual water needs from the sky.
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@Paul
I belong to a CSA and receive almonds in my weekly box during the lull between winter squashes and spring greens. They are grown near Winters from orchards that have been there for decades. This is definitely not part of the Central Valley. There were plenty of almond and walnut orchards to the northeast of Stockton in the 1970s which relied on Delta water.
Expansion of almonds into the southern Central Valley is more recent with Big Ag operations eagerly anticipating new water tunnels delivering Sacramento River water from the SF Bay Delta to southern California and places like Bakersfield. Big Ag in the middle of the Central Valley relies on San Francisco's pristine water supply from Hetch Hetchy which has forced San Francisco residents to consume a mix of local groundwater at significantly higher prices.
Much of the Big Ag almond crop is exported to China and acreage has expanded to serve this market.
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@Lee Harrison You really need to bone up on California's agriculture geography: almonds (which real Californians pronounce to rhyme with "salmon") are grown much farther north than "the extreme southern end". Chico, CA, about 90 north of Sacramento and abutting the northern extremes of the Sierra Nevada mountains, has often been called The Almond Capital of the World, as about 40% of the world's crop is grown in that area. Furthermore, the Cascade Range technically extends as far south as Lassen National Forest, which is central to Northern California.
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Great story. Well researched and informative.
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@ dlill
A few points the author seems to have missed or hidden:
A drone is a male bee, not a worker (female). Workers make up the vast majority of individuals in a healthy hive.
Menthol is used to treat tracheal mites (overall a minor threat to bees because of both highly resistant breeds and availability of low toxicity treatments), but not *Varroa destructor*, the mites beekeepers are (and should be ) afraid of.
The ~3 million hives in the US this year, while a small step down from 2017, is still a good bit higher than a decade ago.
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Yet another reason to avoid commodity agriculture, buy and eat local and small, grow your own food, and plant habitat for native pollinators. My backyard garden produces enough produce for two from April through February with coldframes and local pollinators that if I had to, I'd only need the grocery store for dairy and toilet paper.
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@WWD What about dishwashing liquid, and laundry supplies?
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"30 billion bees (and hundreds of human beekeepers) who keep the trees pollinated — and whose very ...",
My question: Do the hundreds of bee keepers flit about the trees, too?
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With water woes increasing in California, are there other geographic zones of US where it would make sense to shift into almond crops, or at lease expand such crops?
----
Imagine migrating across the nation in a covered wagon, with beehives aboard the wagon!
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@Jean Travelling with beehives in a covered wagon is likely less problematic than travelling with beehives in an A/C-ed hatchback. The hives are wrapped and taped in the night when bees are at home; in an A/C-ed hatchback the escapees buzz against the windows; in a covered wagon, easier to escape into light.
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An article on the plight of bees and no mention of the bee killing pesticide group: neonicotinoids? Or the Trump administration's decision to roll back Obama era protection for pollinators?
https://www.newsweek.com/neonicotinoids-trump-administration-rolls-back-...
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@GMS Neonics aren't harmless, but they've been shown to be a lot less harmful than some other pesticides. It's becoming clear that the worst threat is habitat loss and the resulting poor nutrition and all that goes with it.
The bees of commercial beekeepers are totally dependent on them for survival; but feeding bees sugar syrup and pollen "sub" is a lot like keeping your kids alive on a diet of junk food.
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Torturing bees is about as low as you can go. And as self-destructive. We love you, bees...even if we don't know how to show it.
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@GreaterMetropolitanArea: That's like saying people torture their dogs because they're cooped up all day and can't run around in packs like their distant ancestors.
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Even self-righteous vegans benefit from animal husbandry. For your plant-based diet, where do you think the nutrients are coming from? Manure. For those who drink almond milk, use almond flour (and other flowering food sources), your access to these food sources is because of bees and their beekeepers.
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@GreaterMetropolitanArea I don't know about that. I think some of those chicken and pig factories are way worse
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Fascinating. Thank you.
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Very informative article. We all need to do our part. That's why I started to develop sensors for remote beehive diagnostics and monitoring. Still looking for people to help me out in this mission and I am glad to see so much buzz happening on the topic.
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@Sergey Petrov I see what you did there, “buzz”.
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A whole article about the state of the honeybee and no mention at all about the persistent use of pesticides/herbicides on their health? Many studies have linked the two...I was surprised that this was not discussed.
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@KLM
It does indeed mention pesticides and makes note of the times at which Beekeepers know they have to get their bees back out of the orchards.
I'm not disputing the issues with pesticides, I periodically lose bees when I can tell they've wandered into a bad neighborhood. I have yet to lose a colony that way but it is frustrating at the least.
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A 2009 Documentary film should be of interest to anyone reading this.
Vanishing of the Bees is available on Amazon Prime, You Tube, iTunes and copies can be purchased on DVD for home or educational use. Ellen Page narrates.
My money is on neonicotinoids, which should be banned worldwide. Here is a study you might want to read.
https://www.nature.com/news/largest-ever-study-of-controversial-pesticid...
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@David Gregory my money is on Varroa Mites. They massacre bees at this time of the season
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Great story, but my most troubling take away is ONE GALLON of water per almond. It is almost criminal.
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“Criminal” is a bit of a strong word, don’t you think? The almond orchards are so vast because our desire for almonds is such.
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Yes, I agree. There was very little attention given to the real problem here, which is water use.
Imagine if some form of natural destruction happened while 80% of the country's honeybees were in the valley pollinating trees?
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“Lyle Johnston, a beekeeper and broker based in Colorado, described his methods for keeping colonies healthy: Feed them protein patties to make up for the lack of forage, and place menthol strips in the brood chamber in early fall to stave off mites. And always reserve some of the honey that bees produce to feed them come winter. He learned that last tip in the early ’90s from Joe Traynor, a bee broker based in Bakersfield, who has been renting bees since 1959."
I’m one of those oddballs who truly dislikes the taste of honey, ANY honey. However, I completely appreciate, respect and support the mission of beekeepers and their way of life. Every year I plant various plants solely for the bees so they can pollinate and thrive. I wish I had acres of land to donate to these folks because honey is just one of the many gifts bees give back to nature. I love the simple and basic measures Mr. Johnston takes in keeping his colonies healthy, especially the part of reserving some of the bees’ own honey which they produced. It reminded me of a baker who kept some cookies for herself after she baked 25 dozen for the community bake sale.
This is a fantastic article which was extremely well written and documented. I had no awareness of this dire situation nor bees or beekeepers in general. A sincere thank you to Jamie Lowe and the NYT for illuminating us readers with this valuable and insightful story.
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@Marge Keller Bees need their own honey. Feeding them Corn Syrup is just slow nutritional starvation.
If this country got rid of feed corn and planted real food we would all be better off.
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@Louis J - I completely agree, which is why I quoted Lyle Johnston where he stated come winter, he feeds his bees some "reserve honey that bees produce to feed them ." I don't recall mentioning anything about feeding bees corn syrup.
@Marge Keller
When I set up a new hive, they do get a feeder of sugar water as a "Weelcome to the neighborhood" After that, get to work.
Though almonds require extensive amounts of water and bees, please don't forget about the amount of water that is used to produce beef in California. The amount of water used in the production of beef stagers that of almonds. Both products though are part of California's exports/economy though so not much change I can imagine...
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@Harry
Before reading this article (and boy was I astounded that one almond requires one gallon of water), I remembered reading in the past about how much water the beef industry required per pound of beef.
So, I was curious what the largest water consuming industries were in our country. I found the following, from the site: https://sustainabletechnologyforum.com/in-top-10-list-of-thirstiest-indu...
Here is a list of the industries that consume the most water:
1) Grain farming
2) Cotton farming
3) Sugar cane and sugar beet farming
4) Tree nut farming
5) Fruit farming
6) Flour milling and malt manufacturing
7) Power generation and supply
8) Wet corn milling
9) Beet sugar manufacturing
10) Vegetable and melon farming
And regarding the amount of water that the beef industry uses in beef production:
"Interestingly, while meat farming is often targeted as an energy- and carbon-intensive sector, it’s lower on the list in terms of water use per dollar of economic output: number 15 (cattle ranching and farming), after other animal food manufacturing (number 11), sugar cane mills and refining (12), poultry and egg production (13) and dog and cat food manufacturing (14)."
I was definitely surprised. Bottom line is that I think the most dire thing facing humanity is the availability of water, especially as our population continues to increase at the same time global climate change increases the temperatures on the planet.
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@Harry, most of that water goes into the cattle's feed, not directly into them. Too bad cattle don't like to eat almond leaves.
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@Ho Jo Worker
Interesting link, definitely didn't expect to see some of those types of crops requiring so much water. Just a thought though, cows in America are more likely to be grain/corn fed than grass fed, so it may not show but in some way cattle use more water than one would think! But you are right on the money that the availability of water is decreasing as the years go by.
https://www.meatinstitute.org/index.php?ht=a/GetDocumentAction/i/93607
I rarely see a European Honeybee, and all my fruits and vegetables get pollinated. There are thousands of species of native bees and other pollinators that do the job just fine, particularly if their environment is not saturated with insecticides and other substances poisonous to bees, and if not every square inch is given over to cultivation.
European Honeybees are necessary to support densely planted and cultivated monocultures such as almond orchards, where native bees cannot survive in the numbers necessary to pollinate the crop.
Honeybees are about cheap food, yet we make their lives and hence potentially our agriculture untenable, just as overpumping the aquifers, destroying the soil and its microbiome, and many other shortsighted practices directly put agriculture at risk.
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The almond growers are essentially exporting water from a place that doesn’t have enough. I’ve spent time in the Sacramento valley, it is a dry, dry place.
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You clearly have only been here in the summer. The Sacramento Valley gets 15-30 inches of rain each year, and the mountains around us, where our water comes from, get double that much. We have a Mediterrean climate with a long dry season each summer, which is what almonds require to produce nuts. You can't grow almonds in areas where it rains in the summer. I guess you didn't learn that when you "spent time here."
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Thank you for the great article. I had forgotten that it takes a gallon of water per almond - that alone should make people think twice about eating them. And the poor bees - I don't think we would do very well on a diet of one thing for weeks at a time - I don't know why we expect the bees to be fine with that.
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@KPS The comment on almonds needing so much water is such a ridiculous myth. Almonds do not need any more water than any other plant! Furthermore, plants do not use water, they borrow it! About 95% of the water that a tree takes up is transpired as water vapor out of the leaves through their stomata cells. All plants do this. It's called transpiration. And while the stomata are open is slurps in CO2--scrubbing it from the atmosphere.
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As an urban beekeeper, I don’t see the need for these many almonds. It’s not an essential food at all. We can eat other things. To spend a gallon of water per almond and drive these creatures into the ground for it, seems like a capitalist recipe to me. Maybe the tariff war will decrease the production of almonds. Or then the poor bees will give up the ghost one day. Between varroa and migratory beekeeping, they’re suffering the way of all other agricultural animals. More wildflower plantings near farms indeed brings native pollinators into the picture. Monoculture farms are like barren deserts as far as the bees are concerned once the blooms have set. They (like cows) need more natural nutrition too. Our food and farming system has to change for the better.
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@Yeshwant. Almonds are a critical portable protein for millions of consumers, who enjoy them immensely.
Who are you to say we do not need so many almonds?
Furthermore, your comment on almonds needing so much water is such a tired assessment. Listen, plants do not use water, they borrow it! About 95% of the water that a tree takes up is transpired as water vapor out of the leaves through their stomata cells. All plants do this. It's called transpiration. And while the stomata are open is slurps in CO2--scrubbing it from the atmosphere.
It would be nice if you were not the ambassador of who grows what, and who eats what. And, by the way, our farming system is working out just fine.
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@Patrick Bushwah. Nothing is "critical" about almonds, and the idea that "portable" food is "critical" is laughable. Convenient is not critical. Or did all the generations of folks who lived before cross-country truck transport somehow die of malnutrition and not live long enough to produce descendants while we, their descendants, weren't looking?
1
@Yeshwant
"seems like a capitalist recipe to me."
Good comment. Perceptive and knowledgeable.
California gives up unlimited free water to Almond growers, sacrifices thousands of colonies of bees mostly for the Asian market which pays a premium price.
Capitalist market indeed. We and the bees and the land pay for their wealth accumulation.
7
Thank you, New York Times. This article is EXACTLY why I'm so proud to subscribe to your fine newspaper. What an excellent article. Just wonderful.
32
Thank you for an outstanding article! This should be a wake up call to America. We lived in Davis, CA for 10 years recently and witnessed first hand the almonds, the bees, and the pesticides. Stop the spraying, educate our kids, and get this story out. It is the food supply that sustains us. The bees are so critical.
35
So who cares about farmers, exports and the environment? Does our current "president" understand the interconnectedness of nature, the built environment and business? What about the EPA? What about the climate change. The government that's supposed to be looking out for all of us and coordinating efforts on the national scale is failing. Hate to live in the past but...
"The threat to both managed and wild bees is considered serious enough that in 2015 President Barack Obama established a task force to promote the health of honeybees. Its report called upon the Department of Agriculture to track honeybee-colony loss and to restore millions of acres of land to pollinator habitat."
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Great article. One aspect I didn't see was persistent daytime pesticide use. I heard an interview on NPR a few years ago in which a beekeeper was lamenting the impact of daytime spraying on his almond pollinators.
The interviewer asked why the farmers don't spray at night when the bees are in their hives. That would be good said the beekeeper, but then they'd need to buy lights and pay a shift premium.
Seemed the height of shortsightedness to me.
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@Paul the residual pesticide would still harm the bees, regardless of when the trees were sprayed.
13
Unfortunately as research shows, much of the bees’ troubles come from the practices of the beekeepers themselves. Bees weren’t meant to be working year round or transported all around the country in groups of millions. Much of the disease spread among these large collections of bees has been linked to fatigue and the lack of accounting for the usual natural die off of weaker bees. In wild colonies in temperate climate areas (with winters) a loss of 28% over a year would be common. And there are lots of other pollinators we should be promoting more of as well. I personally have no sympathy for industrial almond growers in a place without enough water for normal human use.
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As a beekeeper for the past 10 years, I can tell you that systemic pesticides, mites (an invasive alien species NOT from the United States), loss of acreage to homebuilding and growing towns, and weather impact every beekeeper, both professional pollinators and backyard keepers. It's not all about fatigue and weaker bee die off.
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This is not only a fascinating article, but also very informative. I am sure the general public has absolutely no idea of the importance of bees in the pollination of so many of the foods we eat. Thank you for publishing this.
22
Thanks for a very informative and interesting article on the importance of bees and their keepers. We must take care of all of our environment.
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@Dorothy Craven Not to seem snarky about it, but industrial beekeeping and pollination practices aren’t really part of the “environment.”
6
@Science Teacher industrial beekeeping may not be part of the natural cycles of the Earth, but they are part of the environment as are people, factories, cars, cows almond orchards etc.
1
We need to do everything we can to support beekeepers and bees. They are invaluable.
Here in Western NC a beekeeper recently posted an ad looking for more acreage to set more hives. The overwhelming response was heartwarming, many from organic growers.
These are our silent heroes.
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