{"id":353201,"date":"2026-06-09T14:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/353201\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T14:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:57:08","slug":"california-almonds-depend-on-billions-of-bees-bitter-honey-asks-at-what-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/353201\/","title":{"rendered":"California Almonds Depend on Billions of Bees. \u2018Bitter Honey\u2019 Asks at What Cost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, as almond trees bloom across California, the world\u2019s largest managed bee migration event kicks off. Beekeepers from around the United States truck billions of bees onto vast orchards<\/a> in the Central Valley to cross-pollinate the trees. This practice sustains California\u2019s almond industry \u2014 the state\u2019s top valued agricultural export \u2014 but it comes at a deep cost to the insects. It\u2019s also just one example of how our food systems have come to rely on honey bees.<\/p>\n

In Bitter Honey: Big Ag\u2019s Threat to Bees and the Fight to Save Them<\/a>, Jennie Durant traces the relationship between industrial agriculture and honey bees across more than a century. The book offers a deeply-reported examination of the stressors faced by beekeepers, what they do to stay in business despite them and how those decisions impact wild bees, domesticated honey bees and the environment. Through conversations with beekeepers, scientists and policymakers, the book paints an incisive picture of beekeeping as a large-scale livestock operation that has prioritized \u201cproductivity and efficiency above all else,\u201d to the detriment of native bees and crops. Still, despite its subject matter, it does all this with a good dose of humor and hope for these buzzy creatures\u2019 future<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The title, Durant explains, has a double meaning. \u201cLiterally, the title refers to the acrid honey that bees produce as they pollinate almonds, honey that beekeepers typically do not sell but let their bees consume instead,\u201d Durant explains in the book. \u201cFiguratively, however, it refers to the compromises beekeepers make to keep their operations afloat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The\"The<\/p>\n

Agriculture and Bees: a Toxic Relationship<\/p>\n

To understand the current state of beekeeping in the United States, Durant takes the reader to its very beginning. Western honey bees were brought to the Americas by European settlers for their honey and the pollination of non-native fruit trees and clover, which were used as food for livestock and their communities. As colonists travelled west, so did their bees and crops. Bees became a symbol of colonization. \u201cLike the settlers they traveled with, honey bees reshaped the land in Europe\u2019s image, displacing native bees, changing plant communities, and mirroring the wider story of Indigenous loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, Durant lands in the post-war era. This is the moment she identifies as a major shift in how bees are used. Farmers scaled up their operations, shifting to monoculture and commodity<\/a> crops like corn, wheat and soy, and honey bees took on a new role as agricultural pollinators. Beekeepers started hauling their colonies to boost crop production, particularly alfalfa and clover seed, which are used to feed cattle. Durant puts this aptly: \u201cbees went from wild foragers to shift workers, clocking in for bloom season as beekeepers hustled them from farm to farm.\u201d With each shift, they reshaped the American landscape, driving out native pollinators and sustaining crops that might not have otherwise survived.<\/p>\n

Durant spends much of the book on California almonds. As she explains how beekeepers maintain their colonies in the face of parasites, climate change and the agriculture industry\u2019s growing demand, it\u2019s hard not to draw parallels with modern factory farming. We learn how beekeepers began supplemental feeding by giving their bees \u201cpollen substitute patties\u201d to make sure their colonies could meet almond growers\u2019 demands even though it can lead to overcrowding, and how they will create pesticide concoctions to fight deadly mites. When Durant asks one beekeeper why he won\u2019t scale down his operation, he simply responds by saying that a good operation must keep growing.<\/p>\n

A Way Forward<\/p>\n

The book isn\u2019t only about the challenges faced by bees; it\u2019s also about possibility. In the second half, Durant describes practices that can help both managed and wild bees. We meet Pete Berthelsen as he conducts a prescribed burn on his Nebraska ranch, one of several ways he\u2019s bringing back pollinator habitats to the Midwest. Prescribed burns can help native grasses and wildflowers grow, while eliminating invasive flora that hinder flowering plants that attract pollinators.<\/p>\n

We also visit an almond farmer who grows cover crops between her trees, a native plant and pollinator farmer in Oklahoma and a regenerative farmer in South Dakota who also keeps bees on his land. Here, the book doesn\u2019t do enough to describe the limitations of regenerative agriculture<\/a>. Studies have shown that it isn\u2019t necessarily an effective climate solution, but Durant only offers the positives, like biodiversity and soil health.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo help pollinators thrive \u2014 and maintain access to the nutritious, diverse food crops we depend on \u2014 we\u2019ll need more than stopgaps and emergency measures,\u201d Durant writes. \u201cWe\u2019ll need a food system that works with nature, not against it; one that places the well-being of pollinators, wildlife, farmers, and the rest of us at its center.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, Durant is touching on a longstanding debate about how best to protect nature<\/a> \u2014 with farms that aim to integrate with nature or prioritizing efficient industrial operations while limiting their encroachment \u2014 without diving into arguments on either side.<\/p>\n

Durant ends the book by offering a brief mantra on how to help bees: \u201cPlant flowers. Limit Pesticides. Share the land.\u201d After such a detailed look at how our food systems and bees are intertwined, one hopes that she would also suggest more transformative changes to the way we eat. Because, as she puts it, solutions will also need to come from the industries and agencies that support and rely on pollinators.<\/p>\n

Clarification: this sentence was edited for clarity: The book offers a deeply-reported examination of the stressors faced by beekeepers, what they do to stay in business despite them and how those decisions impact wild bees, domesticated honey bees and the environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every year, as almond trees bloom across California, the world\u2019s largest managed bee migration event kicks off. Beekeepers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-353201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}