These California almond orchards
are the temporary home
to nearly all U.S. honeybees.
That's right.
It takes nearly 90%
of the country's honeybees
for almond trees to produce the nuts
you eat.
There's millions of beehives coming
to California
to pollinate almonds because
people want almonds
and they want their almond milk.
California grows 80% of the world's almonds
- and is its most profitable crop.
Migratory beekeepers truck in their
bees from all across the country.
They work around the clock,
moving their bees in the middle of
the night when they're not flying.
I have beekeepers that come from
Oregon, Washington, Idaho,
Texas, New York.
But honeybees are getting harder for
beekeepers to keep alive.
Last year, they lost over 43% of their hives.
We worry a lot on our side,
on the beekeeper side.
It's not sustainable.
And I don't think anybody really
thinks it is.
The demand for almonds and almond milk
continues to expand,
meaning they need more bees.
Where those bees will come from
is a bit of a mystery.
So what happens if beekeepers just
can't produce enough bees?
We went to California's Central Valley
to ask the workers
behind the bees.
So why do we care about honeybees?
Well, around
one-third of the world's food supply
relies on pollination.
And we're facing a decline of
pollinators across the spectrum,
including butterflies, bats
and, of course, bees.
Think of honeybees as
domesticated pollinators
managed by commercial beekeepers.
The USDA even classifies honeybees
as livestock.
Historically, crops are pollinated
by native bee populations
and locally managed honeybee hives.
But industrial agriculture grew
beyond these means,
and local bees can no longer meet
the demand for pollination.
This dilemma birthed an entire industry:
migratory beekeeping.
These traveling beekeepers drive
across the country
with their bees stacked on truck beds.
Then, they rent them to growers.
I know this may not look like a lot of fun
to some people.
I can't tell you that I love living
in a truck stop for a month
or more at a time,
but you just sort of get used to it.
More than a hundred U.S. crops require pollination.
But almonds provide the vast
majority of income for beekeepers.
There are over 1.5 million acres
of almond trees in California.
And an estimated 2.5 million
honeybee colonies
were needed to pollinate those trees
this year.
George Hansen and his son Joe
are two of these commercial
migratory beekeepers.
For more than 30 years,
George has made his living
transporting his bees from Oregon
to California for the almond bloom.
I thought that we were going
to be honey producers.
And we were going to produce
honey and sell it.
Over time, it turned out, you know,
having to support a family and pay the bills,
other opportunities came along.
Say, 30 years ago,
there was almost no commercial
pollination going on at all.
And now that's almost all that we do.
Many commercial beekeepers, like
George and his son Joe,
can't survive off of honey sales alone.
When cheaper foreign honey flooded
the U.S. market,
local honey prices plummeted.
Yeah, I worry about the
sustainability of all this,
you know, every day.
Our losses can be scary sometimes,
but every year we just manage
to make it up
by splitting colonies in the spring
and building new colonies.
And that's the way it's been for my
whole life.
It's not getting any easier.
Now, beekeepers make around
80% of their income on pollination.
But as colony losses continue to increase,
it's getting more difficult for them
to make a living.
We've had a few disasters over the years.
And some of it is seeing the bees
just not doing well
or coming out of winter in really
poor shape.
And part of it is wondering, well,
how is this going to work?
Because we depend on this income.
And all of a sudden our livelihood is gone.
George and his crew live out of a motel
for nearly two months every year.
We pick up everything and we come down here.
We live in motels,
we eat in restaurants or
in the room or whatever, now, with COVID.
OK, so this is home.
I was here for almost four weeks in January.
when we were putting the bees into
the orchard.
So, the trick is to stay
comfortable and clean
and not lose track of your
family and your life.
For the almond pollination,
we're in motels for six to eight weeks.
It's a long time away from home.
That's Jenny Durant.
She's been studying bee management practices
and the almond industry
for nearly a decade.
You know, when you think about
a hundred cattle for a rancher —
that's almost 50% of their cattle
being lost every year.
So, it's an immense expense
that beekeepers are having to make up for.
Experts can't point to one reason
why honeybee colony losses are increasing.
Rather, they point to a variety of
issues that are hurting bees,
like parasites, pathogens, poor
nutrition and pesticides.
Pesticides are the most discussed
in the media,
and they are a real issue for beekeepers.
Pests get a little less attention,
such as the varroa mite,
which is really a huge struggle
for the industry.
Beekeepers are having to compensate
for these issues that they're
dealing with.
Some threats to honeybees are much
harder to document,
like the loss of bee-friendly forage
around the country.
Historically, beekeepers have gone
to the midwest
in the summer to produce honey.
But as monoculture corn and soy crops
expanded in the region,
so did the loss of native forage
that provided nectar for bees.
You know, this is like a giant herd
that they're moving around the country,
just trying to provide enough food
for their bees.
As the almond industry expands,
there are sort of more opportunity
for beekeepers to have larger operations.
But there has to be land that can
support those bees for the rest
of the year.
No one knows exactly how many
migratory beekeepers exist,
but they're necessary to keep
honeybees alive and pollinating our crops.
Bees really aren't able to take care of themselves
in the environment that we've created for them,
especially where we're doing our
pollination service
and we're required to be.
But with all the sprays and
the removal of forage,
with herbicides and stuff,
it just makes it harder and harder
for the bees to take care of themselves.
We're supplementing their diet.
We're protecting them from parasites.
In order to get paid, we have to put
our bees where they're in harm's way.
We picked this one up out of one of
these hives over here.
And you notice that this is all scattered.
We need this colony to be more
productive than this.
Honeybees pollinate nearly $20 billion
worth of U.S. crops each year.
Without honeybees,
many crops would not exist,
or their yields would be much smaller.
Because if it's costing a lot more
for beekeepers to keep bees alive,
those costs are going to translate
to the apples we buy, the almonds we buy.
That's going to have a real effect for people who
are more disadvantaged or vulnerable.
While beekeepers rely on the almond
industry for income,
they don't always work directly
with almond growers.
That's the job of people like Denise Qualls.
She works as a bee broker,
which is something like a bee matchmaker,
setting up almond growers with
beehives for pollination season.
Between mid-January and mid-March,
Denise works nonstop.
The intensity that you have in that
two-month period,
I think people just don't realize how
intense it is because we move
bees all night,
check them during the day,
move them at night,
check them during the day.
And honestly,
my phone never stops ringing.
This year, Denise managed 40,000 hives
from 20 to 30 beekeepers.
We've got the border station to contend with,
the county [agricultural] department to contend with,
vehicle breakdowns.
When you have two and a half million
hives coming,
we're talking 30,000 truckloads of bees
that need to be managed.
- So how's the season going for you?
It's OK.
Yeah?
- Yeah, it's about done.
Denise has been working almond
pollination for 15 seasons.
She's seen her business explode in
success over the years,
but now she worries about the future
of the industry.
And I've always felt like we're not
going to have enough bees.
We're not going to have enough bees.
I had no hives left at the end of this season.
I haven't had extra hives for years
and I bring in extra hives
in order to cover all of my losses.
And it's a pretty fair amount.
It's thousands of them and they're
always gone.
There's not anything left over.
The almond industry is already
facing challenges
related to the climate crisis.
Because almonds are a water-intensive crop
being grown in a drought-stricken state.
As the almond industry grows,
it searches for solutions
to the diminishing access to water
and now, honeybees.
Currently only half of U.S. states
have adopted policies related
to pollinator health.
So some organizations and government programs
are tracking pesticide use,
advocating for policy change or helping
plant bee-friendly forage in almond orchards.
On the other hand,
renting honeybees is a huge expense
for almond growers like Arthur Crowell.
My bee bill is about $120,000.
So, you want to take care of them
to the best of your ability.
The wholesale price for almonds has
decreased dramatically
since its peak in 2015.
When the pandemic hit,
almond prices dropped even further.
Less money for almonds could mean
less money for bees.
There will be more bees.
They'll keep developing more and more,
I'm quite sure,
because of the money.
Bee industry workers like Denise and George
feel the mounting pressure of the
colony losses.
While they hope for the best,
they don't know if it's possible
to keep up with the demand for bees.
The almond industry still think
that beekeepers
are crying wolf
because people like myself,
brokers and beekeepers,
do their very best to make sure
growers have everything they need.
Will it take a year when they really
are a million hives short
and they don't get a crop?
Is it that kind of a train wreck we need?
I don't want to wish that on anybody,
but that's - we haven't gotten
anybody's attention yet on any
of these issues.
The almond and honeybee industries
seem to be
inextricably linked with one another.
The question that remains
for bee industry workers is
what happens if almond demand falls?
Will beekeepers have enough income
to keep their bees alive
and pollinating the other crops that
rely on them?
I don't know
that we'll get to a point where we
have no honeybees,
but I actually think it's the loss
of pollinator biodiversity writ large
that is the real loss.
Like, that is the scariest piece.
There is no single solution to mitigate
the threats that our pollinators face.
But rather, it is going to take
people from all sectors
to push for more sustainable systems
that protect honeybees, pollinators
and in turn, the diversity in our diets.
I think this is going to take
the industries who rely on bees
partnering with beekeepers
and having a shared voice
to try and really shift some of the
regulatory support.
My hope for this industry
is that everybody starts
working better together.
I think we're going in the right direction.
I just don't know if it's going to be fast enough.