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Blooming almonds happens almost all at once in California – a wave of delicate pale flowers that take place around Valentine's Day.
And beekeeper Bret Adee is eager to prepare his hives, he works at a Central Valley ranch before placing them in orchards.
He cleverly taps a hive. "We're going to open that, and you're going to see a lot of bees here," says Adee.
Under the lid, sleepy occupants exposed buzz. He uses a smoker to keep them calm and huddled around their queen.
This third-generation beekeeper works night and day with a crew of more than 35 people. Adee has organized more than 100 semitrailer loads of its honey bee hives in almond orchards on a 200-mile strip of the Central Valley.
When temperatures rise and the flowers open, his bees get up and go to work. This is the first annual step of its hives during a 6,500 km tour across the country.
But this almond flower, Adee is struggling more than usual.
Deadouts
Adee has lost more than half of his hives during the winter – 50,000. And he is not alone.
"You know, in September, I thought we had the greatest bees of all time," says Adee. "The bees looked incredibly good."
Like Adee, many beekeepers in the United States have lost half of their hives – they call one without living bees in a "dead end". Some beekeepers have lost up to 80%. This is unusual. And many of the hives that have survived are not very numerous.
For decades, Adee said that if he lost 5%, he was getting really nervous. Now, a 40% loss every few years is more common, he says. But this number of beehives lost across the country is worrying.
Each hive
California's almond orchards have grown so much in the last 10 years that blooming requires almost all commercial hives available in the United States.
Almonds have grown from 765,000 acres to 1.33 million acres in the last decade. Bees come from as far as Florida and New York to do the work. Without these hives, there is no harvest.
The flowering of almonds is just as important for beekeepers. It's a chance to earn nearly half of their annual income and a workplace and growth for bees in early spring while healing from the winter.
This year, many beekeepers had to tell their orchards that they would not have enough bees this year to cover all of their contracts. And some orchards desperately call beekeepers. Some report rising pollination prices.
Sneaky Drageons
Experts say bees face many stressors: chemicals, wildflower loss, climate change, nutrition and viruses. But this year, a particular problem could have killed bees more than usual.
A tiny parasite called varroa mite sucks the body of the bee, causing big problems.
Ramesh Sagili, an expert on bees at Oregon State University, predicted these significant losses because of the mites early last year.
"It's a very lethal parasite in bees," Sagili says. "This is causing significant damage not only to the bee, but to the entire colony.A colony could be decimated in a few months if this varroa mite was not supported."
He added that the exceptionally early and warm spring had caused the bees to start raising baby bees early. This allowed varroa mites to reproduce and multiply as well.
Varroa mites crawl into the cells of baby bees and hide them until the bees close the cell with wax. Then they lay an egg and raise their young on the baby bee.
Emotional sting
As almond blossoms dwindle, beekeepers truck their hives across America, from the Northwest to the Dakotas through southern Maine, in search of spring.
In Eric Olson's foggy and ice-cold cherry orchard, in Washington State, blooming has not yet begun. His team is pruning the wood that would block the light on the fresh fruit.
It helps manage one of the largest beekeeping companies in the Northwest.
He says their hives have suffered a dramatic loss this year. But it's not as bad when he lost about 65%.
"It was at that time that I cried," says Olson, who served for 20 years in the air force. "I was a pilot and I spent my time in combat, never in my life was I as low as when we lost 65% of these bees."
Chasing the spring
Still, almond industry spokespersons say everything is fine.
"Orchard growers with long-standing relationships with beekeepers are not in trouble," said Bob Curtis, consultant for Almond Board of California. "The people who have problems are the ones who do not make the contracts in the fall with the beekeepers."
If Northwest producers line up beekeepers earlier than expected, Olson thinks there will be enough bees for the smallest bloom of fruit trees in the area. Still, he worries about his orchard friends.
"If I can not put bees in my cherries, I have problems," Olson says. "I do not have any culture, what am I doing? I do not know."
Surveys later this spring will give a better idea of bee losses nationwide, but it may be too late for arborists at the end of the pollination line.
This story comes from the Northwest News Network.
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