National Honey Bee Day on Saturday offers a lesson for the upcoming National Aviation Day on Monday.
Considering how populations of certain bee species have recovered while others have declined may help find solutions to environmental problems, such as greenhouse gas emissions from aviation.
The flight patterns of the two issues overlap when you buy a plane ticket. Some airlines offer a box you can voluntarily tick to pay extra for “carbon offsetting.” If you’re considering ticking that box or buying directly from a company like Terrapass, where offset credits are generated through projects like methane capture and forestry, keep the lesson of the bees in mind.
According to the nonprofit Bee Conservancy, one in four of North America’s 4,000 bee species is threatened with extinction. But as Professor Brandon Hopkins, director of apiculture and laboratory at Washington State University, told me in an email, honey bee populations are now stable, thanks largely to efforts by the West Coast almond industry, which needs honey bees to pollinate its crops.
Rick Kushman, a spokesman for the Almond Board of California, cited Hopkins’ research and said, “The reason the almond industry has supported the bee population so strongly is because the bee population is so important to the almonds, and the nutrition of the almond flowers is also important to the bees.”
Kushman added, “You need beekeepers, otherwise you don’t get bees,” recognizing both the workers and the insects that are vital to the industry. In California, 7,600 almond growers and 99 processors fund his organization through a 3-cent-per-pound fee collected under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In other words, to produce California’s largest export by weight (the 2.7 billion pounds the state shipped last year), almond farmers had to overcome a number of challenges faced by bees, mainly by working with beekeepers who were growing new hives faster than environmental factors could kill the insects.
In Ventura County, avocado farmers employ many of these beekeepers, but the big moneymakers in the bee industry are almond farmers, whose trees begin to bloom in February. As the growing season progresses, trucks transport a convoy of hives north, with many stops along the way.
Of course, the future of bees cannot be secured simply by ensuring that the birth rate exceeds the death rate in species selected to survive under the care of human beekeepers.
“There are many other pollinators in the orchards, and out of concern not only for the crop but also for sustainability, we take care of those as well,” Kushman said, noting that 86% of the farms certified as “bee-friendly” by the nonprofit Pollinator Partnership are almond farms in California. The Almond Board brings growers and beekeepers together, promotes the use of bee-friendly cover crops and organizes programs like BeeWhere, which informs pesticide applicators about nearby hives they should avoid.
To replicate the partial success of bee population recovery for other environmental problems, a convergence of environmental and economic interests may be required, similar to that seen with almond farmers and bees. Purchasing carbon offsets for air travel creates this convergence by financing projects that would otherwise not be profitable.
But whether it’s about making carbon offsets or simply reducing emissions of the greenhouse gas methane by preventing food waste from going to landfill, people need to be motivated.
Almond farmers were motivated by the decline in the bee population. The economic threat to their industry was obvious, the costs of stopping the decline were relatively low, and the almond farming community was well organized.
In contrast, climate change is a more distant threat and the consequences of inaction are less clear. While it may cost less than $10 to offset the high carbon emissions of a short-haul flight, the global cost of meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement could be $13.5 trillion, according to the International Energy Agency.
Perhaps bees can remind us of our responsibility to the planet and our opportunity to make a difference.
David Goldstein, environmental resource analyst with the Ventura County Public Works Agency, can be reached at 805-658-4312 or [email protected].
