There are hundreds of quotes about just how beneficial bees are, industrious in their seemingly tireless pollination efforts. One of those is by naturalist Henry David Thoreau who wrote: “The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.”
Beekeeping is a science and an art as well as a passion. For those who keep their 200-pound colonies as winged employees intended to pollinate California orchards, it’s also a business as almond contracts pay an average of nearly $200 per colony for the hive to do its thing.
The National Institute of Food and Agriculture reports what most of us were aware of: “More than 100 U.S.-grown crops rely on pollinators who value-add some $18 billion to crop production.
“Today, pollinators—especially Western honeybees—are at a critical crossroads after being in a noted decline since 2006 caused by a variety of factors ranging from pests and pesticides to diseases and weather.”
Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman is the research leader of the Agricultural Research Center’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, where she spends her days figuring out techniques to optimize colony survival.
“We have a broad mission and spend a lot of time involved with the Varroa mite nemesis as well as coming up with ways to improve nutrition going into winter mode and coming out of it with a healthy population ready to be rented as an effective pollination unit,” she said.
One of the big recent discoveries is that putting honeybees into early indoor cold storage—October rather than November—increases their chances of survival so the colonies emerge more ready to pollinate almonds in February.
“Indoor cold storage is still rather new and we’re refining the technique to optimize survival and colony size just in time for almond bloom,” Hoffman said.