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6B Daily News – Tuesday, March 13, 2012 For rent: Hundreds of thousands of honeybees LOST HILLS (MCT — Almond trees are exploding with pink and white blos- soms across the vast Cen- tral Valley, marking the start of the growing season for California's most valu- able farm export. Toiling among the blooms are the migrant workers that will make or break this year's crop: hon- eybees. The insects carry the pollen and genetic material needed to turn flowers into nuts as they flit from tree to tree. It's a natural process that no machine can repli- cate. But it can't be left to chance. Bees are too inte- gral to the fortunes of Cali- fornia's nearly $3-billion-a- year almond industry. So each year beginning in early February, hundreds of beekeepers from around the country converge on California's almond farms with their hives in tow. Lasting about four weeks, it's the largest such pollina- tion effort on Earth: 1.6 million hives buzzing with 48 billion bees across a cul- tivation area about the size of Rhode Island. "Without the honeybees ... the (almond) industry doesn't exist," said Neal Williams, an entomologist and pollination ecologist at the University of Califor- nia-Davis. "We need those bees. We need them to be reliable, and we need them at the right time." But a mysterious mala- dy known as colony col- lapse disorder has wreaked havoc on the U.S. bee pop- ulation in recent years, stoking fears among almond producers and other farmers that depend on the insects for their livelihoods. Between 2003 and 2009, the number of bee colonies in California plunged 26 percent to 355,000, according to the U.S. Department of Agri- culture. Eric Mussen, another UC-Davis bee expert, said no agency has a precise count; he believes those federal hive statistics to be too low. Still, he too estimates that the state lost about a quarter of its hives over that time period. Although California bee populations have recovered a bit, almond farmers are still feeling the sting. Prices to rent bees have tripled since 2003-2004 to as much as $160 a hive because of tight supplies and rising expenses for beekeepers to keep their colonies healthy. Collectively, California growers will spend about $250 million on bees this year. Scientists believe that colony collapse disorder is a combination of ailments that includes mites, malnu- trition, stress and fungi. Even in relatively nor- mal years, those factors can claim a third of a hive's population, said beekeeper Bryan Ashurst. A fifth-generation Cali- fornia beekeeper with 12,000 hives filled with about 360 million insects, Ashurst said the creatures are surprisingly delicate. "It takes time to build a hive," Ashurst said. "But it can collapse really quick- ly." His crews pollinate all manner of crops, including apples, alfalfa and zucchini. But his biggest job of the year is almonds. Early reports show Cali- fornia on track for a record crop in 2012. California producers this year are pro- jected to grow and ship 1.9 billion pounds of the nuts, about 70 percent of them for consumers in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and other international mar- kets. The source for 80 per- cent of the global supply, California's almond belt stretches from Kern County in the southern San Joaquin Valley to Butte and Tehama counties in the far north of the Sacramento Valley. There are also smaller pockets of orchards in the Sierra Nevada foothills and on the north coast. About 6,500 almond ranchers har- vest 750,000 acres of trees, an increase of 42 percent over the last decade. Nowhere is the pollina- tion process played out on a grander scale than at Para- mount Farming Co., in Kern County about 145 miles northwest of Los Angeles. A unit of Los Angeles-based Roll Global _ a privately held company owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, a billion- aire business-philanthropy power couple _ Paramount is the world's biggest almond grower with 47,000 acres under cultivation. "Almonds are our pri- mary crop and the most critical because they bloom for a short period; it's early in the season and we must have bees to pollinate," said Paramount President Joe Macilvaine. "Lots of things can reduce almond yield — weather conditions, drought, insect infesta- tions," Macilvaine said. "But if you don't have the bees, you never get to begin." This season, Paramount contracted with 26 bee- keepers to bring in 92,000 hives from as far as Maine, Louisiana, Florida and the Carolinas. The rental expense represents 15 per- cent of the company's total almond production cost. Maintaining a supply of healthy, top-quality bees is so challenging that Para- mount employs its own staff entomologist, Gordon Wardell, who holds a doc- torate in the field. He works with beekeepers and research scientists to devel- op reliable pollinators. On a recent warm, near- ly windless day, Wardell donned a bee suit to inspect a hive smack in the middle of a mile-square Para- mount almond orchard, where tiny white petals covered the ground like confetti. Hundreds of hon- eybees buzzed around him as he gently removed the top from a standard, two- tier hive box and pulled out one of eight wooden frames where the worker bees make honey, store pollen and feed their lar- vae. The symbiotic relation- ship between honeybees and man goes back at least 5,000 years to ancient Egypt. Spanish missionar- ies brought the first honey- bees to California in 1750, Wardell said. Today, bees need more care and feeding because their once-natural environ- ment is more polluted and threatened by urbanization. As a result, some adult field bees die after just two or three weeks instead of their normal six-week life span. They're replaced by younger bees who are forced to leave the hive to gather nectar and pollen before reaching optimal strength. "It's like sending (human) 6-year-olds to work at heavy construc- tion," Wardell said. To help their bees stay strong, beekeepers give their charges special foods laced with proteins and sugars. The diet helps them survive the winter and gives them the energy needed to fly long dis- tances and work long hours spreading pollen. Beekeep- ers also have become adept at rejuvenating hives by splitting the populations and replacing ailing queens. The hard work is paying off. After hitting a low in 2007 of about 340,000 hives, according to the USDA, the number of managed bee colonies in California is rising. Other industry experts put the colonies at about 500,000, up from a low of around 400,000. "We're looking at the best bees we've seen in five years," Wardell said as he doused the hive with smoke to distract the insects from his interfering presence. "The bees are better because the beekeep- ers are getting better at managing them." Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Califor- nia and elsewhere are seek- ing ways to make pollinat- ing easier on the traditional honeybees. They're experi- menting with a different bee breed, known as Blue Orchards. The Blue Orchards don't live socially in colonies, instead raising broods individually in hol- lowed-out wood nests. Paramount is hoping to use the Blue Orchard bees as a kind of "insurance in case something happens to the honeybees," Wardell said. Farmers have also begun planting a species of hermaphroditic, or self-fer- tilizing, almond trees. The trees, which are just com- ing into production after a four-year maturation process, still need bees. But pollination and fer- tilization can occur with just one bee visit to the same flower. Traditional pollination requires the bees to carry pollen from one tree's flower to another. Farmers are heartened by the latest research devel- opments. Still, beekeepers said these insects, which are so critical to California agriculture, remain some- thing of an enigma. It's an inexact science "to manipulate the bees to do what they naturally do on our terms," said Henry Harlan, who manages 2,400 hives in Yolo County near Sacramento, Calif. "If you meet a beekeeper who says he knows it all, his bees will probably be dead next year." VA takes steps to prevent more cemetery errors WASHINGTON (AP) — After reporting that it had found 102 more misplaced headstones or markers and 21 graves missing markers at its cemeteries, the Veterans Affairs Department told law- makers Thursday that it's try- ing to prevent future errors by requiring contractors to keep headstones at gravesites under- going renovations and by con- ducting daily inspections. The department has been auditing its cemeteries around the country and so far has found 249 problems at 13 cemeteries. A Veterans Affairs official pointed out that the department undertook the audit on its own and that the problems represent a fraction of the nearly 1.5 mil- lion gravesites reviewed so far. Still, officials said they recog- nized the grief and emotional hardship the errors cause. ''We know we have just one chance to get it right,'' said Steve L. Muro, a VA undersec- retary, said in written testimony provided to a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee. In late January, the VA noti- fied Congress that it had discov- ered problems with some gravesites where contractors had undertaken renovations and had shifted the markers one grave space away from the cor- rect site. In eight cases, people were buried at the wrong site. This time, the vast majority of mistakes occurred when headstones were temporarily removed during second inter- ments and not put back on the proper gravesite. During second interments, family members are buried in the same gravesite as the veteran. Those mistakes took place primarily in Califor- nia, at San Francisco National Cemetery and Golden Gate National Cemetery. Rep. John Runyan, R-N.J., noted that most of the mistakes Print Runs Every Monday - Wednesday- Friday $99 Clock Repair 20910 Pebblestone Dr. Red Bluff Jim Paul Electrical clocks Call for appt. 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