livin veg

On Sunday I saw the most wonderful new documentary called The Queen of the Sun about all the issues affecting bees. From pollution to pests to pesticides to human production. I’m going to discuss one issue the film talks about, but it’s worth seeing the entire thing. I learned a lot in 95 minutes and have a whole new respect for the bee. Now, on to almonds…

80% of the world’s almonds are grown in California. They are America’s biggest horticultural export and six years ago, they were shipped out to the tune of 1+ billion dollars. See that pretty picture to the left? That is what the almond farms look like. For miles, almonds as far as the eye can see.

So how does this impact bees? Thanks to that great new film, The Queen of the Sun, I now know that this huge almond monoculture (the agricultural practice of producing or growing one single crop over a wide area) is devastating to bees.

Bees need plenty of diversity to thrive. The almond trees only flower for 3 weeks in the spring every year. So no bee in their right mind would set up a hive where they don’t have anything to eat the other 49 weeks of the year. But the almond trees need to be pollinated. So what do we humans do to fix that? We ship 3/4 of the US bee population to California every year for those 3 weeks so the almonds can thrive. This means shipping bees from as far away as the east coast on big trucks all the way to California and then back again. Many bees die in transport. Many more die in shipping yards waiting to be collected. The hives are wrapped in plastic so they can’t escape and then begin their journey to the almond farms.

In the picture, see those little boxes below the trees? Those are bee hives. Shipped from some distant place. I never knew that when I ate almonds I was supporting such a horrible practice. When will humans learn that nature works best when lots of different species are living together. Diversity is key. Monoculture ruins ecosystems.

This is only one of the problems bees are facing right now. We humans have our fingers in every aspect of their lives. From artificially inseminating their queens to mass producing them for their honey, people are exploiting bees. But here is the thing: unlike all the other species we exploit like cows and chickens, bees are absolutely necessary for the human species. Bees are responsible for 4/10 of our food. Without them, say goodbye to four bites out of every ten you take. As we all know, bees are disappearing. It’s called Colony Collapse Disorder and there are many theories on why it’s happening. But one this is for sure: we have to do something. If we keep exploiting them, we’re not only hurting the bees, we’re hurting ourselves.

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