The Flight (or ride) of the Honeybee

We don't watch much television over at our house, but about a year ago, we watched a very interesting documentary about honeybees.  I'm interested in bees.  I don't really have time to do any beekeeping with everything else going on, but I certainly realize the importance of bees to the garden.  We need pollination and that is where bees come in.  You might click on this link: PBS: Flight of the Honeybee to watch a little bit of the documentary.  It is only two minutes and 15 seconds long.

As you watch the clip, it will show how thousands of colonies of bees are trucked across the country to perform pollination in the almond orchards of California and then they are loaded up and taken to Georgia (peaches, I presume?) and then they are trucked to Pennsylvania to pollinate apples and then on up to Maine to pollinate blueberries.  I think that's how the term 'busy as a bee' came about.  In all, these bees travel 8,000 miles a year on the back of an 18 wheeler!  The documentary shows a map that traces their movement across our nation and they are trucked right through our area.  I remember thinking to myself, I'm on I-10 a lot and I've never seen an 18 wheeler carrying bees.  Well, I can't say that anymore. 

The other afternoon heading home, I was approaching a truck with a strange net or curtain covering up what appeared to be white boxes.  

What is on the back of that truck?

As I got nearer to the truck, it hit me.  A bee trucker!  I made a bee-line for the truck (sorry, couldn't resist!) and snapped this photo:


Honeybee truckers

If you look at the top right portion of the net at the end of the truck, you'll see a dark patch.  As I got closer you could see that those are bees swarmed in a pile.  In fact there were bees all over the back of the semi and you could see bees flying off of the truck.  The curtain or net keeps a lot of them in, but I'm sure they lose quite a bit down the road.  This is heading east on I-10, so I'll bet these are heading to Georgia for peaches and then up the east coast for apples and blueberries.  How cool is that?

I googled to learn about trucking honeybees.  It is dangerous work.  A few interesting facts about bee truckers:

• Drivers earn $3 per mile or more!
• It is a short bee-trucking season,
• You load at night since bees gather pollen and nectar during daylight,
• You drive all day and don't stop.  Gas station operators don't like customers swarmed by bees at the pumps.  (So how do you use the restroom?  Serious question.  Maybe I don't want to know!)
• You must water bees down in hot climates.  They generate lots of heat and die if they're too hot.
• Count on getting stung driving bees.  Truckers average 4 stings per trip.  Oh, carry Benadryl and make sure you're not allergic to bees or the job could be your last.
• Drive carefully!  You're carrying active swarms of millions or billions of bees.  Bee safe.

Back on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, our bees are local (not trucked in) and mostly wild.  I do have a buddy who provides our family with delicious Cajun Honey, though.  With everything blooming, I figured I'd walk around and take some pictures of the blooming fruit trees and see if I could spot some bees working:


A blooming pear tree

But I didn't see any bees.  Uh oh.  Will I need to truck in some bees?  I hope not.  So I went to check out the peach trees that are blooming.  At first I didn't see it when I snapped the picture, but look to the left of the flower.  A bee zooming to the flower, caught in the act of pollinating peaches!  How about that!


Making a beeline for the peach blossom

Below you can see the bee on the peach flower doing his job.  Thankfully, I won't need the services of the bee truckers this Summer to ensure that I have peaches to make homemade peach cobbler with homemade ice cream!

Pollinating the Peaches

Time for me to buzz off.  Have a fantastic day!