Feed: Mobile Beekeeper - AggScore: 14.0

Mobile Beekeeper

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by Virginia Butler YNN There's a buzz in the agriculture community about beekeepers. According to the State Department of Agriculture, the number of backyard beekeepers is increasing. Their rough estimate is 1700 currently in New York. And the commercial beekeepers are in high demand by farmers who need bees to pollinate their crops. Jim Doan's bees are kind of like snow birds. They're moving to their winter home in Florida this week, but not to relax or retire. The bees are going to work, pollinating crops. Doan says, "We're going to be doing strawberries, actually right now, and then we'll move into squash and oranges of course." Farmers there need Doan's bees, so they'll have a crop to harvest. The US Department of Agriculture says bee pollination is responsible for about one third of the fresh foods we eat. Some farmers find they don't have enough local bees to do the job. Mobile Beekeeper ""People are looking for bees. We've had calls from as far away as California for bees to do almonds." The USDA reports the almond crop alone is projected to need about one half of all honey bees in the United States. That's about 1.5 million colonies by 2010. But since 2006 beekeepers like Jim have lost bees to 'colony collapse disorder'. That's when bees leave the queen, brood and hive and never come back. No one knows exactly why this is happening. The USDA is not calling the loss a crisis at this point. Doan is hopeful about what he sees in his remaining colonies. "Although we ...