Stewart and Lynda Resnick’s Wonderful Co. is among a handful of honey bee farms responsible for the pollination of a third of Americans’ food. But the real buzz is how they rent them out.
housands of honey bees leave a cluster of wooden boxes and rush towards a vast grove of almond trees bursting with white flowers. It’s sweet-smelling springtime in California’s Central Valley, and the bees are about to cross-pollinate one of the country’s top cash crops.
The Resnicks have built an agricultural empire. They know that crops without bees aren’t happy. A wide array of food plants don’t grow well without them. Nuts and fruits are smaller and fewer flowers sprout. Before they owned their own bees, the Resnicks brought in as many as 75 different bee companies every year just to pollinate their almond orchards.
After Wonderful’s bees pollinate the company’s almond trees in early spring, they hit the road in climate-controlled trucks to spread pollen in different farms around the country. Teams of two drivers typically take turns at the wheel, stopping only for fuel and food. The hives are covered with nets so the bees don’t flee during the journey. In early spring, they’re off to Maine for blueberries, then to Massachusetts for cranberries in June.
The tension between falling bee supply and rising demand has been driving up prices for foods like berries, says Barbara Bar-Imhoof of the Center for Integrative Bee Research at the University of California, Riverside. “Pollination needs to be factored in for the prices of products,” she says. “If we can keep pollination assured and keep the bees healthy, that will help key prices stay within a reasonable frame, hopefully.”eekeeping can be a tricky business.
A bee colony contains roughly 60,000 honey bees. A colony is typically made up of two hive boxes, or about 16 frames of bees.“It’s just like a lot of the farming in the U.S.,” Adee says. “The margins are so thin that it’s all done on scale now.”
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