Other bees tend to favor one species at a time, therefore do most of the actual pollination. Most staple food grains, like wheat, rice, soybean, maize and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they are wind or self-pollinated.
Half of all U.S. bee colonies are transported to California each spring to pollinate almonds, Then they go to New York to pollinate apples, to Maine for blueberries, to Massachusetts for cranberries, and then back to the South for the winter.
Each winter the tiny town of Woodville, population a tad over 1,000, located in the far southwest corner of Mississippi near the Louisiana border and the Mississippi River, becomes home to millions of honey bees.
During what passes for winter in these parts, trucks arrive loaded with hives — as many as 450 per truck — and thousands of bee colonies are loosed to zip through the spring wildflowers and blooming trees.
“Things start blooming there in January, and beekeepers from northern areas bring their bees down there basically to fatten them up and get them in tip-top condition for traveling around the country to pollinate crops,” says Jeff Harris, Mississippi State University Extension/Research Apiculturist, and one of the nation’s experts on honey bees.
Richard Adee, owner of Adee Honey Farms in South Dakota, the nation’s largest beekeeper, brings an estimated 35,000 hives to the Woodville area prior to sending them out on the pollination circuit. New queens are also bred during the Mississippi stay. Adee and his wife, Alice, have more than 80,000 honey bee hives. |
