Kelso Gillenwater is a local farmer and beekeeper whose family has been keeping bees for four generations. A large portion of his 1,200 hives are rented to almond growers in California. Gillenwater makes more money renting his bees out to almond growers than he does extracting the honey.
- Almond growers are a 100 percent dependent on honeybees for pollination. If they didn’t have bees, we wouldn’t have almonds.
- Bees are susceptible to a number of diseases and predators, and they can be hurt by many environmental factors such as insecticides.
- Gillenwater extracts honey from about 100 of his hives, and he can get anywhere from 50 to 100 pounds of honey off a hive. With honey selling at nearly $1.50 a pound, the money he takes in from is pretty significant.
- There’s always a demand for local honey.
Best quote: “My great-grand-daddy had some hives that made the sweetest honey you could imagine.”
Links:
How the declining bee population is affecting other major growers aside from almonds:
http://www.blogger.com/goog_1630184710
Almond farmers seeking healthy bees to polinate their crop:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6299480
The health dillema that bees are facing:
http://www.economist.com/node/15612155
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