Mobile Beekeeper

by Virginia Butler YNN
There's a buzz in the agriculture community about beekeepers. According to the State Department of Agriculture, the number of backyard beekeepers is increasing.

Their rough estimate is 1,700 currently in New York. And the commercial beekeepers are in high demand by farmers who need bees to pollinate their crops.

Jim Doan's bees are kind of like snow birds. They're moving to their winter home in Florida this week, but not to relax or retire. The bees are going to work, pollinating crops. Doan says, "We're going to be doing strawberries, actually right now, and then we'll move into squash and oranges of course."

Farmers there need Doan's bees, so they'll have a crop to harvest. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says bee pollination is responsible for about one third of the fresh foods we eat. Some farmers find they don't have enough local bees to do the job.

Mobile Beekeeper
""People are looking for bees. We've had calls from as far away as California for bees to do almonds."

The USDA reports the almond crop alone is projected to need about one half of all honey bees in the United States. That's about 1.5 million colonies by 2010. But since 2006 beekeepers like Jim have lost bees to 'colony collapse disorder'. That's when bees leave the queen, brood and hive and never come back. No one knows exactly why this is happening. The USDA is not calling the loss a crisis at this point.

Doan is hopeful about what he sees in his remaining colonies.

"Although we've lost that many bees, the bees we have left, like the bees here and the bees behind us, they are actually as strong as we've seen them in years, so the colony strength is good, but for some reason we're still losing bees."

Mobile Beekeeper
Doan says his honey production has dropped this year as well and the price of honey is up. That increase is about 75 cents per pound according to the National Honey Board.

But the number of backyard beekeepers supplying themselves with honey is up. Doan sells a starter nucleus to folks who want a hive at home.

"From what I'm understanding and the nucs I'm selling it's probably grown about a hundred percent. There's that much interest."

Doan adds backyard beekeepers are not significantly increasing the bee population or helping large scale farmers. "The hobbiest" he says, "can provide service to a guy who has maybe an acre of apples."

Doan and his bees will still handle the big jobs.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• USDA. PMC
• NRCS
• Big Flats
• Bees
• Pollinators
• Pollen