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<H1><FONT size=2><EM>Beaumont, TX</EM></FONT></H1>
<H1>Agriculture's smallest worker buzzes all around us</H1>
<H2></H2>
<H3>By <A href="mailto:kpeveto@hearstnp.com"><FONT color=#005fa4 size=2>KYLE
PEVETO</FONT></A></H3>
<H4>March, 22, 2009</H4>
<P>
<P>After a puny blueberry crop last season, Sharon Harkness knew all the
fertilizer, rain and sweat in the world wouldn't put more berries on the
bushes.</P>
<P>The honeybees were missing.</P>
<P>She didn't know if it was because of rainy weather, hurricanes or a
mysterious illness that has killed hives across the country, but bees didn't
hover around her Buna farm.</P>
<P>"We hardly had a crop at all," said Harkness, a 53-year-old who has raised
blueberries, mayhaws and other fruits for 20 years. "We hadn't had that happen
before. It was a mess."</P>
<P>Blueberries, like pears, cherries, almonds and dozens of other crops, require
honey bees to bloom. Most years the bees came from the woods around Harkness'
home off FM 1004 or they flew from beekeepers' boxes.</P>
<P>Bees are not surviving like they once did, said Bob Morlock, "the bee man,"
as Harkness called him, who lent the blueberry farmer a few hives of bees to
pollinate her crop. Morlock, a commercial beekeeper who produces honey in Fargo,
N.D., travels to the Buna area each winter to feed and grow his hives.</P>
<P>"Things have changed so much since I started," Morlock said. "You didn't even
have to know how to keep bees and they would stay alive."</P>
<P>Over the past three years, 50 to 75 percent of commercial bee colonies have
been wiped out by the phenomenon named Colony Collapse Disorder, according to
the Texas Apiary Inspection Service from Texas A&M University. Morlock said
the heavy use of chemicals as pesticides on crops and around the home may be a
cause.</P>
<P>"We're in a chemical age now," said Morlock, who has not lost as many hives
as other keepers he has known.</P>
<P>Bee loss has slowed recently, according to the Apiary Inspectors of America,
but scientists are still trying to stop the loss of agriculture's most important
pollinator.</P>
<P>Every third bite of food is pollinated by bees - more than $15 billion worth
of food a year, according to The Beekeeper's Handbook.</P>
<P>Throughout the spring, millions of the tiny insects are busy pollinating
plants and flowers in the yards, gardens and farms of Southeast Texas.</P>
<P>Beekeepers across the north take their bees to the West coast or the South
every winter. Morlock has been coming to Southeast Texas for almost 20 years to
build hives during the warmth and humidity of the early spring. The company he
bought began coming to Buna in the late 1970s.</P>
<P>"It's just a good climate for raising bees with the trees and the pollen that
we get from all the different shrubs and the flowering plants and stuff grows
the bees," Morlock, 46, said in a break from beekeeping work as a few bees still
zipped around his head.</P>
<P>Texas has more than 100,000 colonies of bees, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, placing the state usually sixth or seventh in the
nation.</P>
<P>Despite the suitable climate of East Texas, North Dakota ranked No. 1 in
honey production last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The
state's honey brings a higher price because of its light color and lower
moisture content raised from bees pollinating clover alfalfa, Morlock said.</P>
<P>"We have an early spring here (in Texas), and we start our hives and take
them back north for honey production and then we basically take them to another
spring there," Morlock said.</P>
<P>Throughout the spring, Morlock and his aides build new colonies by removing
the queens, manipulating the bees into creating more.</P>
<P>Wearing white bee suits that cover every inch of skin, Morlock and Shane
Poindexter, 29, of Mount Airy, N.C., worked Wednesday in a bee yard with two
long rows of white boxes situated in a green pasture outlined by tall pines.</P>
<P>They moved deliberately, spraying the bees with a silver smoker resembling a
coffee percolator that can soothe the bees.</P>
<P>Poindexter learned some beekeeping from his cousin and found work with
Morlock for the year.</P>
<P>"I enjoy being in the outdoors, and you get to travel," he said. "To me this
is one of the neatest things I've done."</P>
<P>Morlock began keeping bees more than three decades ago. Growing up on a dairy
farm in central North Dakota, he watched a beekeeper across the road at his
uncle's farm.</P>
<P>"I used to sit and watch him work the bees, and I found it fascinating," he
said.</P>
<P>He went to college, then worked construction and other jobs before becoming a
commercial beekeeper. He started coming to Woodville and Kountze with a crew in
the spring before they moved their hives to Buna.</P>
<P>Now he owns the business - and more than 6,000 honey bee hives spread out
across several bee yards in the area. Morlock is always searching for more
places to raise his bees.</P>
<P>In the fall, he moves his bees from Fargo to Texas and takes a few thousand
hives to California, where almond growers lease millions of hives a year to
pollinate the bee-dependent crop. According to the Texas Apiary Inspection
Service from Texas A&M University, the 1.4 million almond trees in
California require 2.8 to 4.2 million bee colonies.</P>
<P>Moving hives across the country, working seven days a week, the beekeeper's
life is not the back-to-nature job that many think it will be. Morlock misses
his children and wife most of the winter.</P>
<P>By May, Morlock and the hard-working bees will return to North Dakota to
begin honey production in earnest.</P>
<P>"It's the life of a gypsy," Morlock said. "It's a lifestyle you have to
pretty much love."</P>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face="Gill Sans MT" size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>Laurie Davies Adams<BR>Executive
Director<BR><B>Pollinator Partnership </B><BR>423 Washington Street, 5th
floor<BR>San Francisco, CA
94111<BR>415-362-1137<BR>LDA@pollinator.org</FONT><FONT lang=0 face=Arial
color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#0000ff size=4 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="14"><B><A
href="http://www.pollinator.org/">www.pollinator.org</A></B></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"></B><BR><A
href="http://www.nappc.org/">www.nappc.org</A><BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#000000 size=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="12"><B><I>National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2009. <BR>Beecome
involved at <A
href="http://www.pollinator.org/">www.pollinator.org</A></I></FONT></B></DIV></FONT><br/><font style="color:black;font:normal 10pt arial,san-serif;"> <hr style="margin-top:10px"/><b>A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. <a href="http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1219858252x1201366219/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fwww.freecreditreport.com%2Fpm%2Fdefault.aspx%3Fsc%3D668072%26hmpgID%3D62%26bcd%3DMarchfooterNO62"> See yours in just 2 easy steps!</a></b></font></DIV></BODY></HTML>