With plenty of rain and Vermont's abundance of lakes and streams, it's hard to feel California's water crisis from afar. But ironically, this crisis may affect my 15 colonies of Vermont bees. Here's why.
Over the last 30 years, the beekeeping industry has become dependent upon pollination fees it derives from some 15 crops - worth $20 billion annually.
The total value of American honey production is a picayune $400 million. But the pollination isn’t evenly distributed around the country. By far the biggest bee-pollinated crop is California almonds, about $2 billion worth, or 80% of the world's production. And it's California 's largest agricultural export - worth 4 billion dollars annually. Each one of California's 800,000 acres of almonds needs 2 hives of bees each January to pollinate the crop. That means that two thirds of all the bees in the U.S. are either in California or travel there in January to pollinate this one crop.
The growth of beekeeping into its own mono-culture has been the only way to survive for large-scale beekeeping. Such travel adds to the stress on bees from pests and pathogens, so California becomes a huge flu clinic in January, with bees from across the country. To make matters worse, their diet consists of artificial pollen and high fructose corn syrup.
Now the oval nut so beloved in candy bars, marzipan, and a milk-like drink has become vilified as an exorbitant consumer of water. With an estimated one gallon of water needed for every nut, the almond industry consumes 10% of California's agricultural water – kind of a "Chinatown" scenario in reverse - where almonds use as much water in one year as the city of Los Angeles uses in three.
My bees come into the picture because Big Beekeeping is now joined at the hip with Big Ag, especially Big Almonds. Those pollination fees help pay for the research, equipment breeding, lobbying and information that I depend upon to keep my bees healthy. The editor of a national bee magazine assures me that California isn’t going to fold, but almond growers are weeding out old and inefficient plants and waiting out the rain.
For now, fewer almonds mean higher prices - so theoretically, growers and beekeepers win either way. A more somber prediction comes from a journalist who says almonds could win the water efficiency stakes against other activities like dairy. But if the almond growers ever do take on urban areas for water, the fight will be a big one.
