Most of the other commercial beekeeping operations in the state are much smaller than Hauke’s and are also diversified with pollination and bee sales operations, according to Gordon Waller, president of the Wisconsin Honey Producers Association.

“You can make a comfortable living, but it’s not a good living for the hours you have to put into it and the knowledge you need to be good at it,” said John Piechowski, owner of Henry’s Honey Farm in Redgranite.

The California ‘cesspool’

While Wisconsin’s winters can be punishing on bees, some also die each February among California’s 90 million almond trees during what Scientific American magazine calls “the largest managed pollination event anywhere in the world.”

Hauke, who sends 2,400 hives there each year, called it “a cesspool” in which sick honeybees mingle with healthy ones among the trees that produce 50 to 80 percent of the world’s almonds. Making matters worse, some almond farmers spray pesticides when the bees are pollinating, he said.

“That’s why diseases spread so fast,” he said, noting the sick bees can also transmit disease after they return home. “We deal with it because that’s where the money is.”