Now that summer is (almost) here...
Honey bees coming out of almonds in March this year for the most part were looking great. Almonds are a good crop for honey bees. There is lots of nectar and lots of pollen, and usually the weather is moderate ... that is, not too hot, not too dry, not too rainy, not too cold ... so that the bees can fly, eat and be merry. Life is good in an almond orchard in bloom.
After almonds bees go in several different directions. Some go directly to more pollination jobs, usually right there in California, or moving north to Oregon and Washington, even parts of Idaho for more tree fruit work ... apples, peaches, pears, plums and the like. Many of the beekeepers who moved out to California last fall from the Midwest ... the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana, Colorado, and other locations ... can’t really go home in March because it’s still more winter than spring back home, so they want to wait where the weather if better and there’s bee food to be had. So if they can find a pollination job for six or eight weeks to delay that trip east they not only pick up a few dollars from pollination, but they get to let their bees enjoy an additional early summer nectar and pollen harvest.
This turns out to be less ideal than you might imagine ...
Although as many as 40+% of U.S. bees died last winter, with as many as half of them perishing from whatever causes colony collapse disorder (CCD), not nearly that proportion of U.S. beekeepers experienced these problems. In fact, our estimate is that fewer than 5% of U.S. beekeepers have had a run in with CCD. As you can imagine though, this small number of beekeepers commands a huge number of beehives, thus the disparity...
While I’m estimating, here are some recent figures we have come up with that reflect what the U.S. population of beekeepers is. Analyzing our subscribers, honey board resources, talking to beekeeping supply companies, state regulatory agents and beekeeping association leaders, we conclude that there are just under 1,000 commercial beekeepers in the U.S. These are people who make their living from honey bees... making honey, hiring out for pollination, selling bees in season, making or selling beekeeping supplies, selling beeswax, and raising and selling queen honey bees all can be part of the business. Of these, honey and pollination are generally the most practiced and the most lucrative.
After that we figure there are about 5,000 part-time or side-line beekeepers. These folks run anywhere from 50 to 300 or so colonies, and generally are family run operations, with spouse and children part of the picture. They are saving for college funds, maybe a retirement income, a family business that the kids can be a part of, or as a part-time job that generates serious and necessary income for the family.
The rest of us, the back yard beekeepers, are like back yard gardeners – we are everywhere and there are thousands of us. We figure there are about 90,000 – 95,000 back yard beekeepers in the U.S. today. We have on average 10 or fewer colonies and keep them, yes, in the back yard or in bee yards that are usually close by.
From these calculations then we figure there are about 100,000 or so beekeepers in the U.S., total. Of those, probably 2,500 are big enough to be called serious businesses, another 3,000 – 4,000 pretty serious, and the rest chase honey bees as a hobby or enjoyable pastime.
The beekeepers that lost honey bees last fall and winter to CCD were predominately commercial and large side line beekeepers. Whether that’s because they are the beekeepers who were able to note the causes of their problems (CCD-like symptoms), or just those who were reporting them is unclear. ...
People who keep bees commercially keep them to make a living. They take them far and near to fields and farms so the bees can pollinate the crops they are visiting. This is their most-often discussed activity, now that they are dying in droves and the food they help produce could possibly be reduced. Probably the most cited statistic in the entire Colony Collapse Disorder business is the Cornell study that says honey bees help contribute somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 billion worth of food production in the U.S. on an annual basis. This figure is over eight years old (done in 2000), so with inflation that figure should rightly be moved up to just short of $19 billion today. That’s the real number here.
This figure, however, doesn’t include the money paid to beekeepers for all this effort. ...
I recently talked to Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, a professor from the University of Montana and one of the owners of Bee Alert Technology, a company that seeks out problems affecting honey bees, or problems that honey bees can solve. His group has been in the forefront of the projects that have honey bees seeking, and finding, hidden land mines. His group does some good stuff.
He also works a lot with the Military conducting research, some as with the mines just mentioned, but other projects also. I’ll discuss one of these projects in a few weeks involving hardware that is very well adapted to examining biological samples for pathogens, pesticides and the like to discover what’s inside. This has been a difficult project to pull off and all of us are glad to see it finally come to pass.
Jerry has been involved in the Colony Collapse Disorder crisis since the very beginning, and in fact was one of the players who actually named this disorder. What he did was describe what was actually happening to colonies when they came down with this problem. Below, in his own words, is probably the most graphic description of what Colony Collapse Disorder is ... how it begins, the process, and how, ultimately, it ends in a bee yard. I advise you to not continue if you are sensitive to the plight of our honey bees. ...
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