[Pollinator] The Economist: Vitamin Bee

[Jennifer Tsang]

Almond pollination in California


Vitamin Bee


A new attempt to save the most vital workers in the orchards


Mar 4th 2010 | LOS ANGELES | From The Economist print edition

 

Now fattened with cookie dough

AT THIS time of year Gordon Wardell loves to stand amid the almond blossoms
in California's San Joaquin valley, listening to the "low-pitch, warm, happy
hum" of millions of bees. But the bees are not as happy as they sound, which
is why Mr Wardell, who has a PhD in entomology and is a de facto bee doctor,
is here. 

More than 80% of the world's almonds are grown in California and, to
pollinate them, the 7,000 or so growers hire about 1.4m of America's 2.3m
commercial hives. Thousands of trucks deliver the hives in February-from
Maine, Florida, the Carolinas and elsewhere-and will soon pick them up
again. The bees' job is to flit from one blossom to the next, gorging
themselves and in the process spreading the trees' sexual dust. 

Since 2006, however, bees have been suffering from "colony collapse
disorder" (CCD), a mysterious affliction that has drastically reduced their
numbers. As a result, says Joe MacIlvaine, the president of Paramount
Farming and the largest almond-grower in the world, the rental cost of a
hive has tripled in the past five years to about $150. Bee rental now
accounts for 15% of Paramount's costs.

So Paramount has hired Mr Wardell, who has been studying bees for 30 years
and CCD since it broke out. Its cause may be mobile-telephony radiation,
viruses, fungi, mites and pesticides-or none of the above. In the absence of
a clear explanation, Mr Wardell is concentrating on something different:
nutrition.

A healthy worker bee spends about four weeks in its hive, feeding on
protein-rich pollen and nursing larvae, and then another two weeks in the
field eating sugary honey until its proteins are depleted and it dies. For
some reason bees are getting too little protein in the hive, thus dying
after only about four weeks, almost as soon as they venture outside. So Mr
Wardell is force-feeding them protein. He owns a patent for MegaBee, which
he says "looks like cookie dough". He puts a bit of this into the hives,
blocking the bees' entrance so that they have to chomp their way through it.
As part of his new job, Mr Wardell is working with beekeepers across the
country to supplement bee diets everywhere. 

So far he has noticed that hives are smaller this year and some colonies
still collapsing. But he has hopes that his cookies will work, bringing more
of a buzz next year. 

 

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