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Where The Hive Decides What’s Healthy

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While making the documentary film Vanishing of the Bees, my co-director and I drove to California’s Central Valley for four years to film the world’s greatest almond bloom — a monoculture of 870,000 acres, solely dependent on honeybees for pollination.

Despite seven consecutive years of Colony Collapse Disorder, commercial beekeepers are still in business, thanks to the almond industry. These contracts provide 60 percent of beekeepers’ annual incomes. It’s too bad that, ironically, California’s almond groves are killing bees in vast numbers.

This codependent relationship between beekeepers and the almond industry comes at a price. Mother Jones reports that, according to the Pollinator Stewardship Council, “somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of the beehives in almond groves suffered ‘severe’ damage during the bloom, ranging from complete hive collapse to dead and deformed brood.”

Bee deaths post-almond grove have happened before, but this year something went especially wrong.

Eric Mussen, a bee expert at the University of California-Davis since 1976, recently told journalist Tom Philpott that while the almond grove always causes issues, this year’s troubles have been “much more widespread… the worst we’ve ever seen.” So what was different?

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First off, consider that, each spring, approximately 1.6 million hives — 60 percent of managed hives in the United States — are trucked to California from all over the country. White boxes dot rolling hills of pink and white, while their inhabitants pollinate 2 billion pounds of almonds, worth some $4.3 billion. In fact, the Golden State dominates the international almond market, providing for 80 percent of the world’s demand.

That said, however, almonds are treated with systemic pesticides, which have been linked to CCD. Furthermore, they are doused with fungicides. And now farmers are also making special mixes to boost potency.

Not long ago, Mussen discovered that beekeepers were having problems with dying broods and weren’t able to reproduce queen bees when pollen was contaminated with Pristine, a fungicide prevalent in the almond groves. Why then did the chemical’s manufacturer, BASF, find the chemical to be non-toxic to adult and immature honeybees?

The company eventually sent representatives to Central Valley to collect almond-pollen samples. In addition to their product, they found “significant” levels of an insecticide called diflubenzuron, but its maker, Chemtura, insists that diflubenzuron, too, is harmless to bees.

It turns out that growers are combining these two chemicals with ‘adjuvants’, agricultural spraying agents that are supposed to enhance the performance of pesticides. And they do — they synergize and become even more toxic.

In 2012, the peer-reviewed PLOS ONE published a study by Penn State University researchers, who found that, when consumed at low doses, adjuvants inhibited bees’ ability to learn how to forage, compromising the long-term health of their hive.

Adjuvants are considered “inert” and aren’t subjected to Environmental Protection Agency review. Farmers who use them at whim aren’t breaking any California or U.S. Department of Agriculture rules.

The result is all these poisons are weakening the honeybees’ sensitive immune systems, making them unable to defend themselves and susceptible to disease. It also doesn’t help that the bloom hosts millions of social insects from different hives.

Then there are those damaging details preceding pollination. Honeybees are trucked across the country, stressing their systems, and forced to eat the same diet for four weeks at a time rather than feasting on the mélange of flower proteins nature provides.

Not only do their diets become depleted, but the honey (their own food) is also removed to lighten the load before hitting the road. It’s all a recipe for disaster.

Unfortunately, it has become more lucrative for beekeepers to truck their bees to the almond grove – a huge undertaking involving truck stops, long hours, cranes, and semis – than to sell the honey the bees produce.

“Without the almond industry, the bee industry wouldn’t exist,” one large-scale beekeeper told the Bakersfield Californian in February.

Beekeepers such as David Hackenberg have asked growers to keep these poisons far away from the bees when crops are in bloom but to no avail.

Why would the almond growers risk harming the insects they are so very reliant on?

And why would we ever eat conventional almonds that are drenched with poisons and made dead on arrival from pasteurization, which is mandatory prior to the sale of all raw almonds grown in the USA?

Watch best-selling author Michael Pollan speak about monoculture and dying honeybees:

Maryam Henein is an investigative journalist, professional researcher, and producer of the award-winning documentary Vanishing of the Bees.

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4 thoughts on “How California Almonds Are Killing Bees”

  1. Maryam Henein

    And I can tell you have no idea how poisons are killing bees and beings and causing auto immune conditions. Nobody sad that farming was easy. Why does it have to be easy?

    Why you feel the need to belittle me to justifying your actions?You must be kidding me if you think i just regurgitate information.

    I do not want to eat poisoned dead almonds. that is my prerogative. there are plenty of farmers who choose to not use poisons.

    Let me give you a newsflash. Change requires sacrifice. I was on food stamps to make my film. I have also sacrificed alot.

    You can go on and continue to spray your poisons and tell me you have no choice.

    and no you don’t HAVE to always take antibiotics when you are sick. Do you have any clue the abuse and misuse of antibiotics? antibiotcs have screwed my body up and countless others.

    Farming is not easy. You are right. I am not a farmer. I do know however first hand that monocultures lend to the problems you are having. And i do know that most people can’t afford to make a sacrifice. they have a family to feed. SPraying is easier. .

    I don’t want to eat your poisoned dead almonds. PERIOD. thank you and god bless.

  2. I can tell you never had a complete crop loss due to a disease. I have. I nearly lost everything because I wanted to not spray due to a transitional period into organic agriculture (a multi-crop, rotational direct marketing/CSA plan). Took me 10 years to recover financially as I almost lost the farm. I’m still paying off the loans.My WHOLE family suffered. So, yes, there are reasons. Just like there are reasons for you to take antibiotics when you are sick. Mother Nature is not always kind.

    In your bio, you indicate that you are an investigative journalist. So ask questions instead of accuse. If not, dont claim the title. You could have asked questions and might have learned something for an article that actually might be original and contribute to the discussion. Not just regurgitate a point made by the media. You also might have learned that through time I have learned to manage risk by making a spray when conditions are conducive for disease instead of just because i felt like it.

    Oh, and by the way, your understanding and interpretation of the Pristine comment is incorrect. All you have to do is read the entry to its extent.

  3. Maryam Henein

    prevent disease? You have infestations because you have a monoculture. How did they used to do it back in the day? Plenty of organic farmers don’t use pesticides. Please don’t defend your use of poisons. I have the choice to not want to ingest almonds that are not only radiated but sprayed. Monocultures invite these conditions. Why not try planting other things in between your almond trees. who said farming was easy? Farmers should be paid way more for growing our food. They should be revered. But please don’t defend poisons and tell me that you have to do it.

  4. Please state what you mean by “drenched in poisons?” I spray my almond orchard 5 times with a total amount of pesticides about 1/2 gallon per acre total for all applications. These fungicides and insecticides prevent DISEASE and INSECT INFESTATION that lead to CROP LOSS and AFLATOXIN contamination.

    Almonds are grown in California – one of the most highly regulated states when it comes to pesticide applications.

    Try farming for a living and let me know how a NO pesticide policy works.

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