Montana second-largest honey producer in nation

In the world of honey bees, Montana is a haven, a refuge, a place for bees to recuperate and regain their strength after hard duty in the almond groves of California.

And along the way they make honey — a lot of it.

For decades, Montana has consistently ranked as one of the nation's top 10 honey-producing states. Long, warm summer days followed by cool nights, coupled with a diverse landscape of flowering crops, weeds and wildflowers makes Montana prime habitat for honey bees.

In the mid-1970s, Montana hives produced around 7.3 million pounds of honey annually. The state ranked seventh in the nation for honey production, well behind states like California and Florida with a nationally recognized reputation for honey.

In 40 years the state's honey production has more than doubled, making Montana the nation's second-leading honey producer, one slot back from North Dakota. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, in 2013, Montana beekeepers harvested nearly 15 million pounds of honey — a harvest worth more than $31 million.

Today, honey ranks as Montana's 10th most valuable crop — more valuable than the state's entire production of canola, oats and cherries combined. And yet it is only a drop in the bucket.

Montana honey production is a mere sideshow to a global, multibillion dollar industry with its roots deep in Southern California soil.

"It's all about almonds," said Cam Lay, natural resource manager for the Montana Department of Agriculture. "Honey might pay some of the rent, but pollination makes the money."

Today, California produces around 82 percent of the world's almonds, spilling forth roughly 1.85 billion pounds in any given year. Nearly 70 percent of this $2.5 billion harvest is shipped overseas, making almonds California's single most valuable agricultural export — 2½ times more valuable than the state's highly acclaimed export wine industry.

And all those almonds need a heck of a lot of bees. Many of them come from Montana.

"Almonds have a very short bloom," Lay said. "And if they're not insect pollinated, they don't make a crop."

Healthy honey bees are so essential to the almond industry growers are willing to pay beekeepers $175 per hive to pollinate their orchards during the crucial blooming season from February through March.

A large commercial beekeeping operation in Montana can have as many as 30,000 hives, bringing in more than $6 million a year in pollination fees alone. Bee hives have become so valuable that hive theft has become a considerable problem in California.

More than 10 percent of the estimated 1.6 million hives sent to California each year come from Montana, forming a beginning and end point for billions of bees transported across thousands of miles.

"Most of our guys will take their bees down to California to get them out of the winter," Lay said. "When the almond season is done, many of them come back up through Washington and Oregon to pollinate apples, pears and apricots."

By mid-June most of the honey bees have returned to Montana, where they gather energy and vitality before the cycle begins again in late fall.

"They are recovering from their trip to California," Lay said regarding the common sight of bee boxes in the fields adjacent to Montana's highways. "They load them up on trucks and bring them back to Montana where they feast on weeds and wildflowers for several months."

It's an agri-business model that many argue is indispensable in the 21st century world of food production, but is not without repercussions or detractors.

During the busy summer months a typical female "worker bee" lives for only six weeks — but can overwinter for six to nine months sustained by honey and pollen stored in the hive's wax combs.

It's not unusual for a healthy hive to lose 20 percent of its population before the first spring blossoms arrive. Bee populations replenish quickly once the hive's only fertile female, the queen bee, begins laying eggs in the spring.

Beginning in the early 1970s, however, beekeepers across Europe and North America began observing a widespread decline in bee numbers. Once-healthy hives would suddenly appear to be abandoned by the majority of their bee population. Nearly empty hives were regularly discovered, often containing ample stores of food and an unhatched "brood" of immature bee larvae. Some beekeepers reported the loss of 90 percent of their honey bees in a single season.

The cause of what is now referred to as "colony collapse disorder" is still debated today. Everything from pesticides and poor nutrition, to cell phone towers and parasites has been blamed, but no one causative agent has been proven to be the disorder's single source.

According to Lay, there is a growing consensus among bee researchers that colony collapse disorder can be attributed to an accumulation of factors.

"The problem is that bees, like any other organism, can only tolerate a certain amount of stress," Lay said. "When that level of stress is exceeded, the colony dies. I guess the point to me is there is not a simple answer."

It is not the first time a massive loss of honey bees has been observed. In 1904, a mysterious illness nearly wiped out honey bee colonies on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England. By 1907, "Isle of Wight Disease" had spread to the mainland, where it devastated the British beekeeping industry.

The cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921, when a tiny parasitic mite living in the tracheae of infected bees was discovered.

More recently a similar parasitic insect, the Varroa mite, has plagued U.S. bee colonies. A recent U.S. Department of Agriculture study found that roughly 46 percent of surveyed hives had potentially lethal Varroa mite levels.

According to Great Falls beekeeper Brian Rogers, problems such as colony collapse disorder and widespread infection by Varroa mites should be viewed as a part of the natural cycle — best dealt with by supporting the selective process by which the hardiest bees survive to pass on their genetic traits to a new generation of more resilient honey bees.

"This is a natural cycle that nature takes in determining who should live," Rogers said. "The population crashes, but then the survivors rebuild — which are in turn stronger and better suited to the environment in which we live."

Rogers began his career as a beekeeper shortly after retiring from the Air Force in 2008. Knowing little about the science of bees, he spent the next several years building on his knowledge through research and hands-on experience. Today Rogers manages more than 50 hives, and has developed a local variety of honey bees well adapted to northcentral Montana.

"One of the hives we're going to go work today was one that was inside a structure for five years with zero human intervention," Rogers said on a field trip to an organic farm outside Highwood. "They're herculean."

Unlike most commercial beekeepers, Rogers neither treats his bees with commercial miticides nor does he move his hives out of state to pollinate widely dispersed crops. He leaves behind enough honey to allow his bees to survive the winter, then rebuilds the hives in the same rhythm bees have adapted to over hundreds of thousands of years.

The answers to preserving Montana bees and its honey industry may lie in small measures. The USDA and the Montana Department of Livestock recently announced incentive programs offering property owners up to $15 an acre to plant wildflowers in small acreages in Conservation Reserve Program pastures or on the margins of cropland.

"It's a fabulous idea," Lay said. "Bees like a diversity of pollen and nectar sources. All those kinds of things are good for them."