​I promise this is the final post in my almond pollination 2020 series [part 1] [part 2] [part 3]. This time, I’m offering a solution for how the almond and bee industries can sustain growth over the next 2 decades.
 
It’ll be another few years before this happens, but California almond acreage will eventually reach its peak and begin to recede. In the meantime, our best path forward is to protect almond growers and beekeepers through economic policy designed to increase bee supply.

​My last post offered a few approaches to the issue of our limited bee supply and how it’s not compatible with the global demand for almonds. One approach was to provide supplemental funding to beekeepers, who have shown that they can effectively mitigate colony loss with the help of additional income.
 
Beekeepers are well-funded these days thanks to almond pollination fees, but much of that money is spent on Varroa treatments and extra labor to keep colonies alive. More beekeepers are targeting pollination fees as their main source of income, at the sake of honey production.

​Aside from the appeal of high-value pollination contracts, a major factor for the decline in honey production is the influx of foreign honey (see chart). Although U.S. honey consumption has more than doubled in the past 30 years, the dollars aren’t going to American producers. Consumers may think they’re helping to “save the bees” by purchasing honey at the supermarket, but nearly 75% of honey consumed in the states last year was produced on foreign soil.

These imports have driven down prices so much that honey production is no longer lucrative for many American beekeepers. “It costs the US producer around $1.75 to $1.85 to produce a pound of honey,” says beekeeper Kelvin Adee. “They’re bringing it in here under a dollar and there’s no way we can compete with that.”

One way to divert the money back into the pockets of American beekeepers is to increase tariffs on imported honey. Higher tariffs will lead to higher prices. Although consumer demand will take a hit, domestic production will still fall plenty short of meeting demand.
 
Increased prices will draw some beekeepers back to focusing on honey production, ultimately reducing the supply of bees for post-almond crop pollination*. With more hives going to mid-season honey sites, fewer will be available to pollinate apples, cherries, blueberries and watermelons, forcing these growers to raise their bid to rent hives during the spring and summer months. All this extra revenue will allow beekeepers to hire additional labor and invest in increasing their stock of hives.
 
*I say post-almond pollination because I imagine honey producers will still use the February almond bloom to build hives early in the season ahead of the first honey crop.

​Though it may seem like a roundabout solution to the issue of limited bee supply constraining almond production, honey tariffs will provide much-needed funding to beekeepers, who will in turn use the funds to increase bee supply. With this solution, almond growers will no longer bear the brunt of funding the survival of our honeybee population. Other growers--who benefit from strong post-almond bees—will pay their dues, as will American consumers.

​Last month, I was invited by some local beekeepers to visit Australia and learn about the beekeeping and almond industries down under. I spent the week meeting with beekeepers, growers, other businesses in the AgTech space and government officials. We attended conferences and field days and enjoyed some meals with their fantastic coffee and wine. It was a week of learning for me, and I want to share some interesting findings about the industry that I was able to pick up through the Aussie slang. 

​Though Australian beekeepers don’t have to deal with the Varroa mite, the key challenge that dictated how hives are managed commercially is forage availability. There’s a lot more natural forage available in Australia, and compared to the US, hives tend to produce more honey each year. Depending on the region, Australian hives can produce 165lbs per hive each year, whereas American beekeepers are usually grateful to crack to 100lb mark. 

Because of better forage availability, not all beekeepers feed their bees. Some are starting to experiment with it, but the focus seemed to be more on pollen supplements than sugar-based feed. I didn’t find a single beekeeper who feeds with sugar syrup. One interesting impact of this is how many hives in single deep boxes are sent to almonds, which raises a concern for robbing before almond bloom. To prevent this, many beekeepers don’t bring their hives into almonds until 10% bloom, much later than in California. 

Unlike in the US, almonds aren’t the only crop blooming at the beginning of the season, so Australian almond growers must compete with other crop growers to meet their pollination needs. Canola is planted in a similar region as almonds and can bloom before or during almond bloom. In addition, beekeepers in the northeastern part of the country can have access to plenty of natural forage during almond bloom, allowing beekeepers to begin honey production as an alternative to collecting pollination fees. This will likely lead almond growers to raise prices for pollination in to meet their quotas and provide an incentive for beekeepers to skip out on early season honey revenue.

​Vive le Canada! In September, we’re headed to Montréal for the 46th Apimondia International Apicultural Congress. I’ll be getting on stage to showcase our work building Verifli, our infrared hive grading solution, to the global scientific beekeeping community.
 
I first became exposed to the world of beekeeping when I joined The Bee Corp less than two years ago. After a drastic career shift, it’s rather validating for me to have this opportunity to share this work with the scientific beekeeping community.

​A major pain for growers, especially almond growers in California, is renting enough strong beehives to pollinate their trees. Almonds bloom in February when most of the nation’s bee colonies are in winter survival mode. Since it’s difficult to build up hive population so early in the season, almond pollination contract prices are based on colony strength. To validate hive strength, growers hire trained inspectors to pop open hives and estimate colony size, measured by how many frames are covered by bees. Frame counts are time consuming and disruptive to bee activity. Because of how long it takes, inspectors typically only grade a small sample of a grower’s hives.
 
Verifli allows growers to measure colony size without opening any hives. Users simply plug the FLIR infrared camera into their smartphone, snap a picture of as many hives as they’d like, and receive a report of each hive’s frame count. Each picture takes just a few seconds and no bees are disturbed in the process.
 
We also built Verifli to help beekeepers. By providing Verifli reports to their growers, beekeepers can be transparent about their quality of their hives, reinforcing grower’s confidence in the relationship. Beekeepers can also use Verifli as a point of comparison to other hives on the market, which can be used to justify the price they’re charging.
 
America’s National Science Foundation is excited about the broader impacts of Verifli. Data collected with Verifli can be used to optimize hive placement rate and distribution of hives during pollination. Since almond pollination requires more than 2/3 of the nation’s hives, this information could help reduce the strain on the country’s hive population as almond acreage continues to grow.
 
Verifli data can also help companies that develop pesticides and fungicides for crops that require bee population. These companies understand that they can’t sell products that interfere with another input, especially an input as important as bees. With Verifli, these companies can measure whether products in development have an adverse impact on honeybees.

Apimondia will be my first-ever bee conference and it’s crazy to think that I’m going to be on stage presenting my work. I hope some of you are able to attend. If not, I’ll go ahead and have that extra honey sample for you at the conference! Au revoir!
 
See my talk on Tuesday the 10th at 11AM in Room 517C

​For the third post of my almond pollination 2020 series [part 1] [part 2], I’ll discuss ideas to solve the barriers currently facing almond production growth. As I covered in part 2, we’re rapidly burning our way through the two most important inputs: bees and water.
 
The water issue is top-of-mind for the Almond Board of California, as evidenced by the millions research dollars funneled into hundreds of studies on reducing water consumption.
 
The big question we now must address is how we enable the bee industry to meet the demand for almonds? There are two ways to go about it: increase the number of healthy hives or reduce the demand for pollination.

​Largely due to additional revenue from almond pollination over the past 2 decades, the beekeeping industry has demonstrated remarkable resilience against mounting threats to hive survival. Thanks to the almond industry’s increasing demand for pollination, beekeepers can afford to apply numerous treatments to mitigate the destructive Varroa mite—widely credited as a leading cause of hive loss.
 
I built this chart with bee data and almond data from USDA to show how the estimated number of honeybee colonies has changed since 1986. I included almond bearing acreage since 1995 (as far back as the data goes) to demonstrate a compelling case. Here’s my interpretation: steady bee declines through the mid-2000s were only reversed when almond pollination commanded more than a million hives at over $100 each.

This goes to show that when beekeepers have access to additional resources, they have the capacity to respond to threats facing hive survival. If our goal is to grow hive numbers to meet demand for almond pollination, I’m confident that well-funded beekeepers are our best bet.

​Perhaps almond growers will switch to other tree nuts with less dependence on bee pollination, like walnuts, pecans and pistachios. Although their shelf life is better than fruits and veggies, they don’t quite stack up to almonds.
 
The almond industry’s true power is its marketing. It seems like almond products can be found in practically every aisle at your grocery store, but when was the last time you saw pistachio milk or pecan crackers? If the California almond marketers joined forces with the non-almond tree nut growers to focus on copying the success of almonds, it would make the decision to switch away from almonds a little easier for some growers.
 
The tricky part of reducing almond supply is the market dynamics. Thanks to the unmatched success of marketing almonds to a global audience, I don’t imagine the demand for almonds is likely to decrease. Marketers must convince consumers to substitute other nuts for their daily intake, otherwise the price of almonds will rise, and growers will once again be drawn to planting almonds.

​There’s a lot to chew on when it comes to solving the mismatch between almond demand and bee supply, but I hope this post helps to show that we have some potential paths forward. I’ll wrap up this series with one last post that looks at what’s in store for the next 20 years of almond pollination, including some tactical solutions to pollination supply. 

​To follow-up on my last post that looked back at two decades of almond pollination, I want to offer some thoughts about where the industry’s at right now. I’ll focus this post on the current situation and hold off on discussing where the industry’s headed until my next post.
 
Back in 2005, Joe Traynor warned us that “the real crunch for bees will come in a few years when bearing almond acreage hits 730,000 acres.” We eclipsed that number in 2009, and 10 years later we’re sitting on 1,170,000 bearing acres with another 300K non-bearing. With new trees being planted faster than ever, you have to wonder: will the bubble ever burst?

​As we all know, the problem isn’t with demand for almonds—they sell like hotcakes that have a longer shelf life. The problem is with the finite resources required to produce the nuts, most importantly, bees and water.
 
I always chuckle when I read things online about how people should boycott almonds or that vegans shouldn’t eat them because they’re “harmful” to bees. In reality, almonds are the reason why beekeepers can afford to treat for mites 5, 6, even 7 times a year. If beekeepers only had honey revenue to rely on, bees would be in serious trouble.
 
But the additional revenue from pollination isn’t enough to grow the commercial beekeeping industry to meet the consumer demand for almonds. After all, the costs of extra mite treatments and added labor basically wipe out any profits for beekeepers.
 
There’s no reliable estimate for the total number of beehives in the U.S., but it’s somewhere near 2.6 million. If almond pollination requires 2 hives per acre, quick math tells us that we only have the capacity to pollinate 1.3 million acres if we deploy every single hive in the nation. Keep in mind, there are nearly 1.5 million acres of almond trees currently in the ground.

The continued growth of the almond industry is a complex issue. Almonds are a nutritious food that can reach end consumers with relatively little environmental impact. Consumers demand more and more almonds each year, so expanding production makes sense.
 
Except for the fact that the two most critical inputs for production are in increasingly short supply. I’m not saying the Central Valley is about to run out of water, nor am I suggesting or that the nation is on the verge of a bee apocalypse. I’m simply noting that the availability of water and bees is not compatible with consumer demand for almonds.