--- title: Bees and Almonds: A Productive Relationship | TIME description: In California, almonds are big business - but they need more and more increasingly scarce honeybees to stay that way. canonical: https://time.com/video/qlLCyVAF/ og:title: Bees and Almonds: A Productive Relationship og:description: In California, almonds are big business - but they need more and more increasingly scarce honeybees to stay that way. og:url: https://time.com/video/qlLCyVAF/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/qlLCyVAF/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Bees and Almonds: A Productive Relationship twitter:description: In California, almonds are big business - but they need more and more increasingly scarce honeybees to stay that way. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/qlLCyVAF/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Bees and Almonds: A Productive Relationship > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Bees and Almonds: A Productive Relationship [Watch (HLS stream): Bees and Almonds: A Productive Relationship](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/qlLCyVAF.m3u8) (5:55)  _Published 2009-03-14. In California, almonds are big business - but they need more and more increasingly scarce honeybees to stay that way._ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:07 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [California Announces Statewide 'Stay at Home' Order to Stop Coronavirus](/video/aw1TJ0G7/) ### California Announces Statewide 'Stay at Home' Order to Stop Coronavirus [Edible Bird's Nest Industry is Big Business](/video/c1FTUXs0/) ### Edible Bird's Nest Industry is Big Business [Should I Eat Almond Butter?](/video/78VnTN9O/) ### Should I Eat Almond Butter? --- ## Transcript >> Every year, flatbed trucks from all over the country roll into California Central Valley. You might not recognize the cargo at first, but if you listen you might get a better idea. They arrive in the dark to keep them calm, but in the daytime an estimated one million beehives are unpacked and placed amongst the states blooming almond orchards. These little workers have one very important job, to cross pollinate California's almond trees. Fifth generation almond farmer, Jim Huddleston has been watching these bees do their work for decades. >> They like to come out in the morning as we try to set the beehives where the sun will hit the hive in the morning to help warming up a little bit. Today, the wind is blowing right now; we got a little bit of chill in the air with the wind. It's probably snowing him down. They're probably going out. I don't know if they're gonna go out. They're probably hesitant, but you see from about 11: 00 o'clock to about 3-- or 2: 00 or 3: 00 in the afternoon with the warmest part of the day. They're just flying and really strong on a nice warm sunny day. So-- And then you can smell it in the air. You can smell the pollen moving-- >> Yeah. >> and you can go out here to buzz in the trees so you know they're active in getting the Crop- Set. >> This well- choreographed annual event is the biggest moneymaker for more than half of the country's commercial beekeepers. Last fall, these orchards yielded about 1. 5 billion pounds of nuts equal to about 90 percent of the world's annual supply. Orin Johnson is a beekeeper and his family has been in the business since the 1950s. >> Let me go check one here and see where a good one is to open. Bees liked, of course, start from the hive and go to the closest source, but they will work out up to two miles without any problem. They have been known to go as far as five miles. It's a two- sided relationship. The almonds need to be used to set a crop and the beekeepers over the years have become dependent on that paycheck from the almond pollination. We kind of co- exist or we're both we can exist without each other. >> The almond orchards around Medesto are bursting with flowers this time of year. It takes about two beehives to pollinate one acre of trees and it's 660, 000 acres of almonds in California. That means about 20 billion visiting bees. And by the end of the blooming season, this bee population will have doubled. Huddleston explains how pollination works. >> The flower itself has a center tube for pollen tube and choose a little bit longer and that's where the pollen connects and it will draw down that tube. The thing is pollen has to be connected from a different type of tree. That's why the bees are so important that we have to have this pollen transfer from tree to tree so we have two or three varieties in fields most farmers and they-- the connection of the two makes the nut happened. >> To create a single almond, an almond blossom needs as many as a dozen bee visits, but these bees don't come cheap. Growers pay as much as $ 150 per single hive. But Huddleston says despite the price, the bees are worth the money. >> There's different options to try to have mixed the pollen and the orchard with helicopters or there's different sprays that people put out to track bees or makes the pollen and you can spray pollen, but the bees seem to be the best. They do the natural way and we kinda stick with the old ways and they're tried- and- true because I need to make my living and I wanna make sure it's gonna work. >> Natural might be a little bit of a stretch. Left on their own, most beehives that actually be weak this time of year. >> We're just coming out of winner here. We're not even officially end the spring and due to the almond industry's demand for strong hives, we are artificially stimulate them early by feeding-- feeding pollen supplements to give them April or May beehive in February. >> Plus Johnson and others think offering bees just one pound source at a time. In this case, almond blossoms might be contributing to what's known as colony collapse disorder. That's the mysterious phenomenon that's caused up to 90 percent of bees and some hives to die spontaneously in recent years. This in turn has caused the bee shortage that's driven up hive rental prices for almond growers. Meanwhile, global demand for almonds has gone through the roof. In response, California growers have doubled the number of almond acres and production since 1981, which in turn has depressed prices. And that's not all almond growers are facing this year. There's also a drought in California and a sagging global economy. >> Our problem is that the economy has changed our industry. The world economy is depressed and now our prices drop in about half. >> Yeah. >> So, instead of making a dollar eighty or two dollars, I were making about a dollar or less. So, we're trying to make all the overhead cost, which bees are part of, but it is important you have to have its essential crop. So, it makes it tight. >> Despite this, Huddleston is not about to give up. >> But the thing is when you become a tree farmer, you have to commit something for a period of time. You can't say three years into that; I don't like that and go to something else. You get into it, it's 30 years that you're into this one field. So, you have to take care of it and I'm honor it and it's your life that you spend here. So, next year it will be interesting see how things go. I'm in for the long holes, so make it worth. That's the male. >> Okay. >> No stingers. >> Next up for the honeybees, for some of them the work continues. They'll be traveling north to Washington State for the apple bloom. For TIME. com, I'm Kate Pickert. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Bees and Almonds: A Productive Relationship","description":"In California, almonds are big business - but they need more and more increasingly scarce honeybees to stay that way.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/qlLCyVAF/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2009-03-14T02:55:45.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/qlLCyVAF.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/qlLCyVAF/","duration":"PT5M55S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/qlLCyVAF/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```