to gather data from representative
hives. The pre-bloom and initial
bloom period is the BIP Tech Transfer
Team’s window of opportunity —
they follow their beekeepers’
colonies into the almond groves
to provide valuable services in the
form of colony health assessments.
This year, BIP Tech Teams from
Minnesota, Oregon and Texas met
in Turlock, California, and from there
were dispatched to sample their
many beekeepers’ colonies.
In a typical BIP assessment, Tech
Teams document the overall
condition of the hive and the status
of the queen, note the quality of the
brood, count the number of frames
of bees, look for signs of disease,
and test quantitatively for varroa
mites. The teams send data and
samples back to the BIP lab at the
University of Maryland, where other
BIP team members work to further
analyze the samples and ultimately
to prepare detailed reports. These
reports help the beekeepers make
better colony-management decisions
during and after the bloom.
As the bloom progressed this year,
temperatures dropped. By this time,
however, many beekeepers had gone
home, trusting their bees to do the
The BIP Tech Transfer Team Dan Aurell
(TX) and Phoebe Koenig (MN) sampling
colonies in the almond orchard.
Photo Credit: Anne Marie Fauvel,
The Bee Informed Partnership
Anne Marie
Fauvel,
Tech Transfer
Team
Coordinator,
The Bee
Informed
Partnership
hard work of pollinating each flower.
Yet in the cold, bees are slow to rise
in the morning, and their flying time
is limited, so they pollinate fewer
flowers. If the bloom were to end
suddenly, the beekeepers would be
called back to feed and potentially
retrieve their colonies but only when
they are released by the growers.
The retreat is a little less hectic,
but time consuming and logistically
challenging nevertheless. Northern
beekeepers are generally happy
to let their colonies linger in their
warmer-than-home climate, but
Southern beekeepers are typically
antsy to get their bees back home to
make splits in more clement weather
and diverse forage.
In the past few years, some growers
have begun planting supplemental
cover crops, mustard and radish
seeds for example, to provide
the visiting bees with a little extra
nutrition during their stay in California.
This concept could considerably
benefit the bees during an extended
stay and ease the logistics both
before and after the almond bloom,
however, it is currently applied on
a very small scale compared to the
scope of the almond industry. In the
future, broader adoption programs
will be dependent on expanded
cooperation between beekeepers
and growers.
Many crops in the U.S. food system
depend on beekeepers and the bees
they manage for pollination. Among
bee-pollinated crops, however,
California almonds are by far the
largest and most economically
important. The relationship between
growers and beekeepers is fragile;
without income from almond
pollination, many beekeepers may
be out of business, and therefore
would not be able to provide bees
to pollinate other crops. The Bee
Informed Partnership is proud to be a
valuable resource to beekeepers and
almond growers as they work together,
and increase their understanding of
each other, in a well-choreographed,
sometimes frantic, but essential
partnership, that leads to the largest
production of almonds on Earth.
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