Bees in the News (plus BONUS industrialization rant)

One of my favorite Internet habits is to check the visual journalism blog of the New York Times, called Lens.  Their February 10th "Pictures of the Day" post featured the following image of a St. Haralampie celebration in Bulgaria, complete with mentions of honey, jars and beekeepers!

Screen shot of the blog post.

Aside from this being a beautiful, honey-toned photograph, the image is remarkable in that it captures a ritual that seems exotic and foreign to many onlookers in the United States.  That insects and their sticky product can be cause for religious celebration inspires curiosity in us and yields a perception of awe that is not necessarily rooted in empathetic understanding.  I believe that, especially after today's lecture on commercial honey and the industrialization of honey/pollination, it is important to note that our efficiency-driven, capitalist market view of the precious process that is honey production strips the bee of its dignity.  Instead we should revere the honey bee and (while we're at it) sanctify the craft of apiarists, as the Orthodox Christians in Bulgaria do with their patron saint of beekeepers.

As it stands now, bees are herded en mass like cattle to the almond orchards of California in an act that defies their natural instinct for flight and flower diversification.  They are a mechanism of production in a market with high demand, whose consumers perhaps do not understand the origin increasing costs.  I used to naively think that almonds were expensive because they were rare, when in fact, there are miles and miles of almond-producing trees whose price arises from the necessary inputs of the mono-culture crop.  

One of my classmates illustrated this point excellently using the allegory of industrial crop fertilizer being like mass pollinator bee rental.  When you have farmland with plants that are nearly genetically identical (i.e. only almond trees, no other plants), the ecosystem must work harder to maintain highly fertile production (since diversity = awesome), so you need (artificial, usually) fertilizer.  Likewise, if we have orchards of purely almond trees, there is no way bees can naturally fertilize them (they would get bored, weaken from lack of nectar/pollen diversity, etc.), so half the U.S. population of bees must be shipped in to sustain the current system.  As with the artificial fertilizer problem, however, this is not working.  Bees are dying, and the population must be sustainably brought up in the West instead of humans relying on shipping them across the country.

While it seems that capitalists and economists hate bees, the silver lining for me has been that I recently found out The Royal Economic Society of the United Kingdom has a BEE in their logo!  Check it out:

I couldn't find information about the exact meaning or purpose behind the logo itself, but I found that their July 2008 newsletter featured an interview with an Adam Smith expert that mentions bee imagery in a statue of Mr. Smith.  Here is the relevant excerpt (skip to brown):

JS: : Taking this last point, can we examine the statue in greater detail? I notice that you have embodied a number of artifacts or tools on sections of the statue which have individual significance as far as the work of Smith is concerned; eg the plough, the bee hive, the globe, Smith’s academic gown, the bales of corn and of course Smith’s covered hand over the globe — the ‘invisible hand’ of the market.

AS: Yes. If we take the hive first. The hive concept, which is borrowed freely from Bernard Mandeville’s ‘The Fable of the Bees’, is symbolic of numerous elements of Adam Smith
— a monumental figure On the 4th of July on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh the long-awaited statue to Adam Smith was unveiled. Below is an account of an interview that John Struthers of the University of the West of Scotland held with the Sculptor Professor Alexander Stoddart. Professor Stoddart is widely regarded as Scotland's most renowned monumental sculptor and is based at the Paisley campus of the university where he is also an Honorary Professor of Arts and Media. The statue was unveiled by Nobel Laureate Professor Vernon L Smith.14
Smith’s contributions; eg The famous pin factory and the concept of the division of labour — just like a bee hive full of hard work and productivity. The ‘workers’ are akin to the bees in the hive — industrious, proud, and working collectively — a venerable ‘maelstrom of economic activity’. This is where we get the term ‘hive of industry’ from. Around the hive are several banding tapes. These represent, respect for property, and respect for persons. In fact they represent the Rule of Law or respect for property rights which is now recognised as an essential part of Smith’s economic philosophy. Not a stifling or stultifying bureaucracy, but an enabling and benevolent authority or government — minimum government in fact.

Well, that's all I've been thinking of for now, folks.  Thanks for reading!

Diana

Information Sources:

Picture Post: Praise bee - a mass for St. Haralambos by Rob Sharp for The Independent

Happy St. Haralampi Day by Turlough for Propolis 

Royal Economic Society Newsletter Issue 142 (pdf)

Stand Aside, California Wine

Where does Cali get all its cash? Wine, right? Nope, it turns out that California's #1 horiticultural export is almonds! That's right, in this great piece in the Guardian, Allison Benjamin writes that in 2007 almonds earned the state of California, "more than $1.9bn, double the revenue from its Napa Valley vineyards." Ok, clearly almonds are a defining feature of California's landscape and economy.

And almonds needs bees. Bees come from far and wide to help California pollinate their colossal almond crop. But with colony collapse and the rest of the erratic weather shaking planet earth, bees are harder and harder to come by. Apparently this year is crazy than ever - the bee deficit is driving almond prices up. The Daily Green reported last week that the price of renting a colony for Cali is through the rough. "Three weeks ago if you asked $150 rent for colony you'd be laughed right out of the almond orchard. Today, $200 isn't an uncommon offer, and the line goes out to the parking lot for growers wanting to pay that amount."

How much does colony rental factor into almond prices? Check this out. The biggest almond producer in the world, Paramount Farming, was featured in the Economist. The president of the company reported that renting bees now makes up 15% of the total cost of the company's costs. If bees continue to disappear, we'll soon be paying something short of the price of gold for all our favorite fruit and nut crops.