Here is the plain text result:
Under blue skies, where low-rolling hills rise south of the Canadian border in the tiny town of Adams, N.D., a couple braves the stench of old honey, wax, smoke and bee muck.
Nancy and Keith Budke, married 43 years, are migratory beekeepers. They produce honey with the taste of canola nectar, sweet clover and other flowers that their bees pollinate first in North Dakota, then in Texas, after being hauled there by truck, and eventually in California — if the bees make it that far and if nobody snatches them.
This season, the chances of the bees making it to California were much lower. Honeybee colonies are under siege across much of North America. And the Budkes, owners and operators of Budke Bees, a small commercial beekeeping business, know it all too well. Parasites, loss of habitat, climate change and pesticides threaten to wipe out as much as 70 percent or more of the nation’s honeybee colonies this year, potentially the most devastating loss that the nation has ever seen.
“There is a shortage of bees across the entire world,” Ms. Budke said. “It’s a crazy life that we lead because we’re trying to fight so many different battles.”
At the start of their annual migratory journey last August, the Budkes had 2,900 hives. Larger operations manage 10 times as many. But the challenges faced by the Budkes in getting their bees to the plains of Texas, and then to the almond groves of California, mirror those of virtually all beekeepers.
Ms. Budke, who is also a registered nurse, nurtures the millions of tiny insects with the care of a loving pet owner, inoculating them against viruses and pests and making sure they have enough to eat.
Healthy bees mean healthy people and a healthy climate. Though most people fear the winged, golden insects with their fierce stingers, honeybees play a pivotal role in the production of about 100 crops Americans consume, pollinating the blooms on vegetable plants and fruit and nut trees.
Commercial bee businesses make most of their money pollinating fields and orchards, particularly in California, which produces 80 percent of the world’s almonds. Flatbed trucks from all corners of the country haul bees to the state’s almond groves for its pollination season, arriving from October to March. There, the Budkes and other beekeepers earn about $200 for each hive — the most profitable of prizes in the $721 million industry.
“It’s really the Super Bowl of beekeeping,” said Scott McArt, associate professor of pollinator health in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University, where he helps run the Dyce Lab for honeybee studies.
Getting there, though, has increasingly proven difficult. There are the worsening perennial problems for beekeepers, and now, this year, there are new issues emerging downstream from the rapid changes in American government.
The fate of honeybees first became a national focus after headlines in late fall 2006 and early winter 2007 screamed, “Bees Dying: Is It a Crisis or a Phase?”
Since then, governments and academics have sought to solve the head-scratching mystery of vanishing bees that laid waste to much of the industry. Some years are worse than others, but there’s been a steady decline over time.
Scientists have named the phenomenon colony collapse disorder: Bees simply disappear after they fly out to forage for pollen and nectar. Illness disables their radar, preventing them from finding their way home. The queen and her brood, if they survive, remain defenseless. The precise causes remain unknown.
Bee colonies have become even more vulnerable because of the increase in extreme weather conditions, including droughts, heat waves, monster hurricanes, explosive wildfires and floods that have damaged or destroyed the bees and the vegetation they pollinate. If that was not bad enough, parasites — and other creatures that researchers refer to as “biotic” threats that prey on bees — proliferate when there is damage to ecosystems.
All that means that the U.S. beekeeping industry has contracted by about 2.9 percent over the last five years, according to data collected by IBISWorld, a research firm.
Annual loss rates have been increasing among all beekeepers over the last decade with the most significant colony collapses in commercial operations happening during the last five years.
And now, compounding the troubles for the bee industry are recent federal cuts proposed by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to the Department of Agriculture, where researchers were studying ways to protect the nation’s honeybees.
These challenges coincide with big changes in federal policy. President Trump’s trade wars could raise prices for imported foods and make it more difficult for farmers to sell their crops abroad. Coupled with a lack of bee colonies, farming could become more expensive and difficult, driving up prices for many staples.
The current administration’s deportation of immigrants in the country illegally and revocation of the legal status granted to some foreigners by the Biden administration appears to be discouraging foreign workers from applying for temporary work visas.
“If you go as a colony into winter time with high varroa mite loads, those colonies usually don’t survive,” said Ms. Niño, the University of California, Davis professor. “It is difficult to keep the colonies healthy and strong.”
The growers, Ms. Downey said, not only may have received fewer bees but also weaker ones.
In a statement, a U.S.D.A. spokesperson said that the agency “is aware of the unusual losses to our nation’s honeybee colonies and is concerned about its potential impact on food production and supply. U.S.D.A. Agricultural Research Service scientists are working closely with federal partners, stakeholders, and impacted parties to identify the source of this agricultural challenge.”
But for now, the agency will have to do its work with fewer researchers.
The timing of the colony collapses couldn’t have been worse. “We have so many crops that are going into bloom and rely on pollination right when all of this was happening — the firings, the crisis of honeybees,” Dr. Ternest said. “What kind of trickle-down effect does that have on, of course, the farmers, but potentially even things like food prices?”
Source link
