I first thought about becoming a beekeeper after reading an article about how for the first time this year, the almond growers in California (who provide 80% of the world’s almonds) were struggling to find enough bees to pollinate the almond trees.
I was surprised and started reading more. The articles were frightening. Since 1950 the population has decreased more than 50%.That means that the number of bees we have now is less than HALF of what we had in the 1950’s and we’re feeding THREE TIMES the number of people. Bees handle 80 percent of all pollination worldwide. Scary.
The more I read, the more frightening it all became. 3/4 of the food we eat is pollinated by bees. Yet, this CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) was rampant, not only here in the U.S. but all over the world (although the rest of the world shows about 20-30% loss and we are showing 50-60% loss). There seem to be many theories about why – pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, diseases, etc but most scientists seem to agree that the two most prominent causes appear to be pesticides and habitat loss.
So after all this reading I figured, “Hey, we have a bunch of land here, what would it take to help out a little and put up some beehives? Let’s help the little fella’s out.”
See? That statement is where it all started to go wrong.
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