[Pollinator] The Almond and the Bee

[Ladadams at aol.com]

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The Almond and the Bee
A global biological process begins with Joe Traynor and his brokering of bees 
for California's most valuable horticultural export

Singeli Agnew 
Sunday, October 14, 2007 
 
 
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Every year about mid-January, Joe Traynor says goodbye to his wife, moves out 
of his house and sets up shop in a second-floor apartment on the other side 
of Bakersfield. In a small room with a rumpled bed, he manages to get a few 
hours of sleep most nights. Three phones ring persistently. 
Traynor is a bee broker for apiarists and almond growers. For six weeks every 
year Traynor - under the auspices of Scientific Ag Co., the company he 
founded in 1973 - concentrates on honeybee pollination of California almond trees. 
This unassuming man has become the best-known middleman in the business, a 
respected intermediary in the largest managed pollination event in the history of 
the world.  
In describing the pollination of California almonds it's hard not to slip 
into superlatives: 80 percent of world almond production takes place in 
California, and almonds have become the country's most valuable horticultural export. 
In 2004, more than a billion dollars worth of California almonds were sent into 
the global marketplace, double the revenues from the state's wine exports. 
The California Almond Board has pledged to make almonds "the healthiest 
specialty crop in the world," pouring research money into studies that bolster 
enthusiastic nutritional claims about heart health and cancer prevention. But the 
work of pollinating this vast string of orchards - 600,000 acres between Red 
Bluff (Tehama County) and Bakersfield, a job that must take place over 22 days - 
is more than the local bees can handle. It requires importation of more than 
half of the all the honey bees in the United States.  
Every February more than one million beehives - that's some 40 billion bees, 
most of them driven cross-country on the back of semi trucks - are unloaded in 
the cool hours of darkness between the endless rows of almond trees.  
Once a beekeeper himself, Traynor is the first to acknowledge two seemingly 
contradictory facts: First, the growth of the almond industry has been a major 
source of income for beekeepers. On the other hand, it has changed the 
beekeeping industry more than any other factor this century, and has created a 
melting pot of bees that has spread diseases that put many beekeepers out of 
business.  
The pollination of almonds is the defining influence in commercial beekeeping 
today, and provides a glimpse into the value and demand of pollination, as 
well as the unprecedented stresses facing the nation's honeybees, stresses that 
many say are at the root of the current colony collapse sweeping through the 
industry. The country has lost more than half of its bee colonies over the past 
30 years, and new problems crop up faster than scientists can solve them. 
Though almond growers use some of the most sophisticated agricultural technology 
available today, the harvest still relies on a simple visit from a bee. With 
an entire year's worth of income linked to this act, farmers get understandably 
nervous when they hear about massive and mysterious bee disappearances. And 
when Traynor picks up the phone late at night in his office in Bakersfield, 
another beekeeper on the line with no more live bees left in his boxes, the 
specter of a potential pollination crisis weighs heavily on his shoulders. 
The relationship between blossom and bug dates to the angiosperm explosion, 
more than 100 million years ago. Flowers evolved to beckon the bee, bees 
adapted to exploit the blossom and both prospered. Today, the mechanics of 
pollination remain unchanged.  
Though honeybees have hogged the pollinator limelight, they are not working 
alone. Twenty thousand other species of bees pollinate plants, as do moths, 
wasps, butterflies, birds and bats. But honeybees are one of the few pollinators 
that live socially, making them a conveniently portable companion for humans. 
Beekeepers like to point out that it's impossible to cram a bunch of bats into 
boxes and move them around the country to service crops. In the early days of 
American agriculture, farms were small and diverse, and many farmers kept 
bees for honey. Pollination was a welcome perk in the pursuit of sweetness. Over 
the next century, farms grew, and farmers and beekeepers declined. Corporate 
farming businesses replaced small family farms, driving crop specialization and 
concentration, neither of which were good news for pollinators. Monoculture, 
the cultivation of one crop over vast acreages, now defines our agricultural 
landscape. The mechanization necessary to farm such behemoth tracts of land 
demanded precise rows and clean fields. Weeds and wildflowers - the natural 
habitat of wild pollinators - were removed. Pesticides followed, killing off any 
remaining insects, including pollinators. A single bloom cycle now extends for 
acres and acres. It's feast or famine, on a schedule disconnected from life 
cycles or evolutionary adaptations of the insects. Thus was born a relatively 
overlooked invention of modern agriculture: pollination management.  
The growth of monocrops paralleled a decline in honey prices, Traynor says. 
China was dumping honey on the U.S. market, and beekeepers couldn't sell honey 
above their price of production. The small American beekeeping industry might 
have gone under, save for the advent of paid pollination. Traynor says he 
became a broker because he failed at beekeeping; he lacked the patience to open 
boxes with the necessary calm hand, he said, but he had a knack for diplomacy 
and a natural skill as a matchmaker.  
Traynor started working under another broker, and his first contract in the 
early '60s was for alfalfa-seed fields around Bakersfield that were supplying a 
burgeoning beef industry. A few years later, he headed back to Davis for a 
master's degree in soil science. At the same time the almond industry was 
conducting research at the school. Traynor got caught up in the experiments, and the 
crop has been part of his life ever since. 
"The almond thing just totally changed my career," says Traynor.  
Across the country, apple, cherry, blueberry, cranberry and melon farmers 
also started hiring bees. Today, beekeepers like to remind people that one out of 
every three bites we put in our mouth depends on insect pollination.  
"[But] almonds are kind of the granddaddy" of the industry, says Traynor. And 
because they are so competitive globally, they drive the supply-and-demand 
structures for the rest of the crops requiring honeybee pollination. When 
Traynor started his business in 1973, hives were rented to almond growers at about 
$10 a hive. This year, Traynor's price was $155 per hive, and some hives were 
rented as high as $170 per hive. Beekeepers across the country now flock to the 
state hoping to strike it rich on the Almond Rush.  
Richard Enns farms 360 acres of almonds near Bakersfield, on land his family 
has owned since 1917. The family once raised cotton, alfalfa, carrots, wheat 
and corn. Enns, a soft-spoken man in his early 50s, had no plans to farm, and 
went off to Cal State University Bakersfield in 1970 to get a degree in 
business administration. He came back to the farm to help his dad temporarily after 
his foreman died, and soon realized the almond business was beginning to boom. 
Almond acreage has doubled in the past 20 years, and every year more dirt is 
plucked clean and planted in almond trees. Farmers in the Central Valley can 
hardly afford not to plant almond trees now, says Enns.  
Enns describes his work in measured terms - the slicing of the soil, the 
mathematical calculations of the rows, the fungicides, the pesticides, the 
carefully measured drips of water. Almond farming is a precision operation, and 
critical to the equation is the $45,000 Enns spends on two to three weeks of 
pollination for his 200 acres of mature trees.  
He prides himself on being a hands-on farmer, and though he's always had 
success with Traynor's bees, Enns makes regular inspections of the hives with 
Traynor's assistants - driving from hive to hive in the safety of his pickup, 
while each hive is opened and confirmed to be brimming with bees.  
Traynor maintains that it's a misnomer to count bees by counting hives - it's 
what in the box that counts, and he talks bitterly of beekeepers who deliver 
empty hives to orchards and cash the check before the dearth is discovered. 
The financial rewards of almond pollination have encouraged a certain number of 
carnie-like thieves to flock to the state every February, he says, with 
nothing but junk hives. They'll deliver hundreds of hives to the orchards, but there 
might not be any bees in the boxes.  
Hive strength is measured in the number of frames covered in bees, and 
Traynor is known for having the highest standards in the business; all his 
beekeepers must deliver eight-frame hives or they don't get paid. This guarantee is one 
of Traynor's selling points, and his willingness to make frequent inspections 
of the bees in the orchards backs the deal.  
By Valentine's Day, the nut trees are usually in full bloom. From the air, 
the whole valley seems blanketed in lacy strips of snow - acres of pale pink and 
white blossoms beckon tens of billions of bees. This year the bloom is late, 
and Traynor is still fielding last-minute calls from beekeepers without 
orchards and almond growers without bees. Between calls, he buys flowers for his 
wife at Safeway.  
Every morning at 6, Traynor meets beekeepers for breakfast at the IHOP off 
Rosedale Highway in Bakersfield. Much of the information in the beekeeping 
industry is passed back and forth during such cholesterol-filled roundtables. On 
Feb. 15, the table included a bee researcher from the federal laboratory in 
Tucson, an Australian beekeeper touring the state and the second-largest beekeeper 
in the United States, Ron Spears, from Southern California.  
Spears is a tall, thick-waisted man with ruddy cheeks. Spears and his crew 
unloaded several semitrucks full of hives shipped up from Southern California 
the night before. Traynor and Spears are friendly, but Spears finds his own 
orchards. With some 20,000 colonies of mostly healthy bees, Spears is doing as 
well as any in the pollination business.  
"You either get big or you get out," Spears said by phone. Paid pollination, 
often starting with almonds and ending with apples and carrot seed in the 
Northwest, only takes up a few months of the year. Beekeepers need to find good 
forage for their bees for the rest of the year. This allows them to make a crop 
of honey, as well as keep their bees strong for the next pollination season. 
Spears has cornered clean, lush winter locations for his bees in sunny Southern 
California.  
"Anyone can have 100,000 hives, but if you don't have the locations you're 
sunk," Spears explained. "There's no way you could afford to have the land." He 
spends the time it takes to find the right locations. Without the stress of 
agricultural pesticides, nor the bleak foliage of more northerly winters, Spears 
is able to skip many stresses that plague Northern beekeepers.  
As a result, Spears' bees arrive in the almond orchards fatter, stronger and 
more ready to forage for nectar and pollen. But Spears hasn't idled in his 
success, and he guards his secrets carefully. One of his tricks, according to 
Traynor, has been to concentrate his hives to minimize contact with other 
people's bees.  
The almond orchards are one big brothel, as one beekeeper put it. You've got 
bees coming in from every corner of the country, and they're passing diseases 
back and forth. Spears plays it safe and covets orchard contracts on 
contiguous acres - a habit that has taken years and required some elbow shoving. Even 
Traynor has lost contracts to Spears' shoving.  
Frank Eischen and his assistant, Henry Graham, listen intently to the 
conversations around the table. They spend most of their year at the federally funded 
bee lab in Tucson, testing new chemicals to treat varroa mites, the worst of 
honeybee enemies, and a primary vector for a slew of other viruses and 
diseases that kill bees. For the scientists, having more than half of the country's 
bees in one place is a great opportunity for field research. And coming out for 
the almond bloom - even though it means weeks of sleep deprivation - is a 
welcome treat after months glued to microscopes.  
The fraternity of beekeepers share an unspoken understanding. Mite treatments 
only work for a while before the mites reproduce resistant strains, and 
render the chemicals useless. Eischen and his researchers are busy trying to keep 
ahead of the cycle, but in the field, the reality is beekeepers want something 
that works immediately, at the height of a mite infestation. Almost in code, 
information about illegal treatments is passed, beekeeper to beekeeper. Some 
rely on hand-mixed chemical concoctions; combinations of old remedies in new 
concentrations and experimental applications of Mavrik, an unlicensed treatment 
of fluvalinate.  
Over eggs, the scientists coax information out of the beekeepers: What are 
they feeding them? How often do they move? How often do they inspect the hives 
for mites? Spears has had no problems with hive collapse, and prides himself on 
running a clean, tight operation. Much of the success of mite treatments has 
to do with the timing of applications, and the nutrition levels of the bees. 
Spears examines each hive on a 22-day cycle, and he pays his help better than 
most. Almond rental is the only thing that makes these efforts pay off.  
To get a honeybee hive ready to pollinate almonds in February, beekeepers 
must trick the bees into thinking it's spring, so the hive will be forced to lay 
brood, build its numbers and fatten its workers. Pollen patties - caked 
mixtures of sucrose, brewer's yeast and human-harvested flower pollen often imported 
from China are fed to the bees. Corn syrup is pumped into a plastic feeder in 
each hive through a gas pump. The mixture is tough to get right, and often 
gives the bees nosema, or diarrhea. Beekeepers spend an average of $20 per hive 
on winter feed. For a modest operation with 2,500 hives, that's a $50,000 bill 
for fake flowers.  
Those who migrate to California in the fall to prep their bees for the 
almonds must find land to put them on. As development sucks up open space, many 
beekeepers find themselves driving farther and farther to their bee yards. 
Recently, some beekeepers are experimenting with storing hives for the winter in 
temperature-controlled potato cellars in the High Plains, and trucking them in 
right before bloom, saving on feeding costs. 
Traynor's wife, Nema, (that's Amen spelled backward, she points out) stops by 
his office every night with a dinner delivery during the six-week pollination 
marathon. Otherwise the IHOP eggs at 6 a.m. might be the only meal he 
remembers to eat. 
"Every second counts," explains Traynor. "Most of the year my time is worth 
about $15-$20 an hour. For these six weeks, it's more like $500-1,000 an hour," 
he says matter-of-factly. If a beekeeper finds his hives are suddenly dead, 
or his truck breaks down on the way to California, Traynor must be able to find 
replacement bees in hours. Timing is critical; if bees are delivered late, 
the beekeeper won't get paid.  
In the past few years, bee losses have been so high - and the bees that are 
still alive have been so weak - that some beekeepers have taken to flying in 
live bees from Australia to fill their hives. The bees arrive from Sydney on the 
wings of 747 jumbo jets. They land at San Francisco International Airport and 
after brief agricultural inspections are dumped into hives destined for the 
orchards. At more than $100 for a 4-pound package of bees, the imports are a 
break-even business at best, and mostly function to keep relationships with 
growers from passing on to another beekeeper; the loss of a big orchard contract 
can spell the end for a bee business. Ironically, in their bid to keep hives 
full, the beekeepers may be doing more damage. Scientists studying bees believed 
to have succumbed to colony collapse disorder have recently identified a 
common virus they say may have spread to the United States on Australian package 
bees. Few think the new virus, Israeli acute paralysis virus, is the only 
culprit, but it may be the proverbial straw. 
Scientists are still trying to unravel the mystery of the recent widespread 
colony collapse disorder. Abundant theories - neonicotines, a pesticide that 
impairs the neurological function of insects, a new virus or fungus spread by 
the mite, nutritional deficiencies caused by last summer's drought, even 
problems associated with genetically modified crops, corn syrup and cell phones - are 
still being tossed around. But many, including Traynor, think the issue is a 
victim of a media storm. Not that there isn't a problem, he says. In the past 
six months, researchers say, beekeepers in at least 24 states lost between 25 
and 80 percent of their bees, certainly more than the usual die-offs that 
beekeepers have acclimatized to. But it's much more of a chronic problem than a 
sudden mystery, says Traynor.  
Whatever the case, bee stress is a major issue, and all agree that the bees 
are showing signs of fatigue. Traynor thinks a variety of factors are leading 
to lowered immune function, and a minor new biological agent like IAPV is then 
able to wreak havoc. Many scientists agree. "We're placing so many demands on 
bees we're forgetting that they're a living organism and that they have a 
seasonal life cycle and they're going to have down times," says Marla Spivak, a 
honey bee entomologist that works for the University of Minnesota. "We're 
wanting them to function as a machine. We want them to be strong and healthy all the 
time, and we're transporting them like they were a machine ... and expecting 
them to get off the truck and be fine."  
When the bloom is over, Traynor moves back to his house and sleeps. "It's 
like birthing a baby," he says. "You're really relieved when it's all over." He 
catches up on the news that has passed during the bloom while he stands in line 
at the post office. Article after article about bee collapse has been sent to 
him - and only now does he have time to digest them. The news of bee collapse 
led many to conclude crops are in trouble, explains Traynor, but the 2006 
almond crop was the biggest on record. This year's crop is expected to be even 
bigger, despite large-scale bee die-offs.  
Because the demand seemed so great, and the reward better than ever, 
beekeepers flocked to California. Like nervous gamblers, almond growers tend toward 
safe bets, demanding two hives per acre instead of the one that researchers like 
Eischen have said are necessary. Beekeepers, though struggling, are racing to 
get in on the pot of gold. While the almond crop may be killing their bees, 
it's also the only thing keeping them afloat.  
In late August the work of those tens of billions of bees is finally drooping 
from the trees in the Central Valley. Harvest machines roar into action and 
don't stop until mid-October. Mechanical shakers grab the base of each tree and 
shake the nuts off. A second machine blows them into windrows; a third 
vacuums them off the orchard floor. Dust covers everything for hundreds of miles.  
At Travaille and Phippen Inc., one of the few family-run processing and 
marketing plants in the almond business, a constant stream of trucks bring nuts 
from orchards around Manteca (San Joaquin County). The precision that begins in 
the fields continues in the processing plant. In a big metal building, a series 
of conveyor belts, rollers, vacuums and sorting nets pull the nuts through a 
giant steel and rubber intestine. The soft hulls are pulled away and sold for 
cattle feed. The shells are crushed and resold for livestock bedding. Even the 
dust collected by the harvest machines is gathered into dirt piles that will 
be sold as topsoil.  
In the hand-sorting room, 10 women pick through the nuts, catching the last 
of the small stones or blemished nuts missed by the dozens of machine sorters. 
The nuts are sorted - the best looking ones ending up as whole snacks, the 
chipped ones to be ground or sliced.  
A fraction of them stay in California. Container ships docked in Oakland 
carry 95 percent of the Travaille and Phippen almonds to markets Europe and Asia. 
This year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts a 1.33-billion-pound 
almond harvest, much of it exported. 
A bee that emerges from its cell in Australia may be flown on a jet to San 
Francisco, then trucked to an orchard in Oakdale (Stanislaus County). The nuts 
it pollinates may be shipped to Spain for processing and then on to Japan for 
baking, thus completing a four-continental biological process.  
Traynor acknowledges this impressive global food chain with a quiet nod. He 
stirs honey into his tea at his daughter's house in Berkeley, and tosses a book 
across the table. It's called "Honey: the Gourmet Medicine" - it was 
Traynor's 2002 attempt to boost demand. The honey in his tea is from Mike Wells, a 
beekeeper Strathmore (Tulare County), and Traynor holds the glass bottle in his 
hands with a subtle reverence. The honey is made from sage blooms in the 
Sierra, harvested after a late summer's forage, before the bees were being prepped 
for pollination. Surrounded by honeybees and beekeepers, Traynor points out the 
ironic fact of how little honey there is. The honey that bees make from 
almond blossoms is phenomenally bitter - almost impossible to eat. None of it is 
harvested.  

Singeli Agnew has covered food and farming in New Mexico, Montana and 
California. Her documentary film about a beekeeper, "Pollen Nation," 
_www.pollennationthemovie.com_ (http://www.pollennationthemovie.com/) , will be shown tonight 
at the Mill Valley Film Festival, 6, at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill 
Valley. 
This article appeared on page P - 12 of the San Francisco Chronicle
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Coevolution Institute
423 Washington St. 5th
San Francisco, CA 94111
415 362 1137
LDA at coevolution.org
_http://www.coevolution.org/_ (http://www.coevolution.org/) 
_http://www.pollinator.org/_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 
_http://www.nappc.org/_ (http://www.nappc.org/) 

Join the Pollinator Partnership to save the bees, bats, butterflies and more! 
See _http://www.pollinator.org/_ (http://www.pollinator.org/)  for more 
information.

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