The Business of Bees: Area farmers hire bees to pollinate fields

Many plants depend on bees to produce crops. And when bees grow scarce in nature, farmers must rent them from professional beekeepers.

According to Ken Norman, president of the Missouri State Beekeepers Association, certain cash crops depend on a little help from the bees.

“The main paying ones are cucumbers and apples,” Norman said. “In Monett, they do put (bees) on sunflowers. For honey production, soybeans and clovers are the big ones.”

Area farmers hire bees to pollinate their fields. But in the eyes of beekeepers, there is more to the business than busy bee workers.

“(Farmers) are paying for the service,” said Webb City beekeeper Jann Amos. “You are paying me to load up my truck and come out there and set them up. You are paying for depreciation on my equipment and for the care of my hives, so there will be bees next year.”

However, expecting bees next year is starting to look like wishful thinking to Amos.

In 2005, Amos had around 300 hives. He is down to fewer than 60 now. Drought, freeze and the mysterious colony collapse disorder have combined to devastate his hives.

Last year’s late freeze came just as bees were heading to orchards to do their work. David Murphy of Murphy Orchards near Marionville said he just avoided paying for his bees.

“We were just getting ready to put them in when we lost everything,” Murphy said.

Gary Lindeman, who raises apples around Marionville, already had bees in place. He called his bee specialist right before the freeze.

“I’d already had him come and get the bees when we had the cold spell,” Lindeman said. “I guess I could have saved the bother if I had known it was coming. It was a total loss.”

A hard life

Amos said the freeze was hard on bees.

Bees consume both pollen and nectar, obtaining fat and protein from pollen and carbohydrates from nectar – what Amos calls “meat and ’taters for bees.”

Wildflowers were hurt by the freeze as well, further robbing bees of nourishment.

Amos said any honey production he gets is gravy. He rents bees and raises new hives called “nucs,” short for nucleus colonies. Neither business produces much honey and some of the plants he pollinates, such as cucumbers, are poor food sources.

Pesticides are another constant worry, and Amos said it is important for farmers and beekeepers to work together. For example, he worked with a pumpkin farmer suffering from an infestation of assassin beetles. They switched pesticides and sprayed at dusk – after Amos smoked his bees into their hive.

“He got a good kill on his bugs,” Amos said. “My bees were just fine.”

Amos doesn’t hold any romantic illusions about the hard work his bees are doing, either.

“I facetiously say that sending a bee to a cucumber patch is like sending them to hell,” Amos said. “We put 40 colonies on a cotton wagon and park them out there with no shade, 110 degrees in the sun, and every 10 days we move them. Cucumber pollen is poor quality and the nectar is poor quality, and that’s what you are doing all summer. The bees get beat all to hell.”

Such stressful working conditions are a contributing factor in colony collapse disorder Amos has seen a difference between the people who keep their hives stationary and those who move them around.

“It hasn’t hit the hobbyists as bad as the big guys,” Amos said. “We stress our bees.”

Bee expert Eric Mussen of the University of California-Davis addressed CCD during his presentation at the March 13–14 Missouri State Beekeepers Convention at the Clarion Hotel in Springfield. While CCD has changed the pollination marketplace, he said CCD is caused by more than stressed-out bees.

“We’ve been moving bees since the horse and wagon,” Mussen said. “We’ve moved them all through the automobile age. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

Sticky subject

Mussen said prices for pollination are running around $150 per hive in California, especially in the pollination-intensive almond business.

In Missouri, prices are lower, but the market is volatile. Few people are willing to part with information on what they are paying or charging. Murphy said he was paying around $30 to $35 a hive, but he has a long-standing relationship with his beekeeper.

“I’ve got a private individual who puts them in mine,” Murphy said. “Others, they (went) to hauling theirs to California and the price went up.”

Amos said many of his arrangements are long-standing as well. He doesn’t have enough bees to spare for any new pollination customers.

“I had a farmer decide to raise his own bees a few years ago,” Amos said. “He called me after they failed, and I had to tell him, ‘You aren’t on the list, and I don’t have enough bees for the ones who are.’”[[In-content Ad]]