Follow the Money Honey. . .

This post originally appeared as a project post for Food History Project as fulfillment of and MLA in Gastronomy at Boston University.

“Can you hear that?” starts John Miller of Miller Honey Farms. He continues, “That’s the sound of money. . . fresh, printed money.”1 He stands amid rows and rows of trees in full bloom.  It is a dazzling sight with gentle rolling hills, a blue and cloudless sky and white-frosted trees as far as the eye can see. This is central California’s almond growing region.  As if it were a match designed by Cupid himself, sometime around Valentine’s Day, the almond trees of California bloom and the honey bees arrive to help the immobile blossoms copulate.  The orchard hums with the sound of Apis Mellifera, common honey bees, dancing between the trees. It is that hum whispering ‘cha-ching’ into Miller’s ears.  This particular tune is worth about $600,000 to Miller.2 He is a migratory beekeeper.

The almond orchards and honey bees are an unlikely match in the heart of California’s central agricultural valley. Indeed, neither almonds nor honey bees are native to California, much less the Americas.  This is a story of two seemingly star-crossed lovers, the Lavant almond seed and Eurasian honey bee.3 A migration across continents and oceans that took centuries is what made almonds and bees one of the most powerful agricultural duos in California and, ultimately, the world.

For several decades, the Almond Board of California (ABC) has embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign to make the almond king of the nuts and, perhaps as an unintended consequence, the honey bee its queen.  In the 1960s ABC seized on market conditions to catapult the California almond industry to the world’s top producer and most sought after nut (technically, it is a seed).4  With prices on the rise and Italian almond production in decline, California’s land usage for almonds quickly went from 100,000 acres to 800,000 acres.5 In a similar timeframe, the demand for migratory beekeepers went from about 250,000 colonies to nearly 1.5 million colonies.6  It is worthy to note that in 2009, the honey industry value was $208 million while fees paid to migratory beekeepers exceeded $350 million.7

Migratory beekeeping is the practice of periodically moving bee hives to locations where more pollen and nectar are available for bee foraging.  This is not a novel practice invented for the benefit of almonds.  An Egyptian papyrus from 250 B.C. shows the earliest indication of migratory beekeeping.8 At this time, the value of honey bee pollination was yet to be discovered.  The honey bee was instead revered for its stored foodstuff and, what was then the only known sweetener, honey.9 Ancient beekeepers aimed to maximize honey production.  Migrating bees was a sort of transhumance, the practice of seasonally moving livestock to new pasture to improve food availability.  Bee transhumance or migratory beekeeping allowed beekeepers to extend and increase honey production.

The honey bee remained in Middle East, the Mediterranean and tropical Asia until the 1600s when humans spread them to northern Europe and Asia.10  It arrived in Virginia by boat in 1622, but did not make its journey, also by boat, to California until the 1850.11  This honey bee expansion period was for honey production. The role insects played in pollination was still not yet understood.  Initially, beekeepers paid farmers to bring bees to their crops with the goal of feeding the bees to produce honey.12  At the turn of the century, fruit producers realized that self-sterile fruit trees required insects for cross-pollination and bee hives were introduced for pollinating coffee.13 By the 1940s, the tables turned with farmers paying migratory beekeepers for pollination services.14  According to one estimate, in 1992 migratory beekeepers improved annual crop yields in the U.S. by up to $5.7 billion.15

The almonds rise to dominance is not as well-documented as the honey bees.  Wild almonds, also known as bitter almonds, originated in the mountains of the Lavant.16 During ancient eras, one might imagine wild honey bees pollinating wild almond flowers in the Lavant.   Archaeological evidence suggests almond were collected as early as Neolithic times.17  Rather than cultivate the poisonous bitter almond, early humans selected seeds with a single genetic mutation that made them sweet and edible seeds.18  Through the middle ages almond cultivation spread from the Lavant throughout Europe. The spread of almond cultivation was slow until the early 20th century when cross-pollination methods were better understood and utilized.19 As it turned out, a key to cross pollination is a healthy and abundant pollinating insect population.

Almonds did not arrive in California until the 1850s.20 At first, they did not thrive in the climate until four specific varieties – Nonpariel, IXL, Ne Plus Ultra and La Prima – were selected in the late 19thcentury.21  California’s almond industry was built on these varieties.  They not only fared well in the climate, but also, and more importantly, they cross-pollinated with each other to give consistent quality yields.22 California’s almond production remained pretty steady until the 1950s when several new advancements help boost crop yields.  Mechanical harvesters are generally credited as the breakthrough technology that lead to increased crop yields.23 However, it does not seem coincidental that pollination services by migratory beekeepers were also becoming a valuable industry at this same time.

Today,  California is the only U.S. producer of almonds generating 82% of the world’s supply of almonds.24 In 2013, more than 30 billion honey bees worked to pollinate 90 million almond trees spanning across 800,000 acres of prime California agriculture land.25 That crop acreage is second only to hay and ahead of grapes in California.26  The bees work provided about 700 billion individual almonds weighing in at somewhere around 1.85 billion pounds.27  That is more than twice the weight of all other nuts produced in the U.S. combined.28 In dollars and cents, almonds led the value of California specialty products at $3.4 billion.29  It takes more than 1600 migratory beekeepers to make all this happen.30  However, the next breakthrough for almond growers may prove detrimental to the migratory beekeeper industry.   A recently developed self-pollinating almond may render their services obsolete.31

The annual honey bee migration to California around Valentine’s Day is the largest in the world.  The honey bee and the almond are interesting bedfellows locked in a complicated co-dependency for survival.  Without the honey bees, California’s almond industry might collapse. Without the almond, a large number of the 30 billion honey bees needed for pollination would become unemployed.  If new self-pollinating almonds become the new industry standard, perhaps the world will find a new appreciation for the honey of 30 billion unemployed bee workers.