How Many Registered Bee Colonies Montana

Smoot honey bees work on their honey combs at a hive near Power.

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

And along the manner they brand 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 mural of flowering crops, weeds and wildflowers makes Montana prime habitat for beloved bees.

In the mid-1970s, Montana hives produced effectually 7.iii meg pounds of dear annually. The state ranked seventh in the nation for honey production, well behind states like California and Florida with a nationally recognized reputation for dearest.

In 40 years the country's honey production has more than than doubled, making Montana the nation's 2d-leading love producer, one slot back from N Dakota. According to U.South. 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 every bit Montana'due south 10th most valuable crop — more valuable than the state'southward entire production of canola, oats and cherries combined. And however it is merely a drib in the bucket.

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

"It'south all about almonds," said Cam Lay, natural resources manager for the Montana Section of Agriculture. "Honey might pay some of the rent, just pollination makes the money."

Smoot Honey Co. honey bees return to their hive after collecting pollen in Power.

Today, California produces around 82 percent of the world'south almonds, spilling along roughly 1.85 billion pounds in whatever given year. Nigh 70 percent of this $2.5 billion harvest is shipped overseas, making almonds California'southward single about valuable agronomical export — ii½ times more valuable than the state's highly acclaimed export wine manufacture.

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

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

Good for you honey bees are and so essential to the almond manufacture growers are willing to pay beekeepers $175 per hive to pollinate their orchards during the crucial blooming flavor from February through March.

A large commercial beekeeping performance in Montana tin have as many as 30,000 hives, bringing in more than $vi one thousand thousand a year in pollination fees lone. Bee hives have become and so valuable that hive theft has become a considerable problem in California.

Clothed in a full bee suit, Great Falls beekeeper Brian Rogers pulls a frame from one of his hives near Highwood.

More than than x percent of the estimated ane.6 million hives sent to California each yr come up from Montana, forming a offset and end betoken for billions of bees transported across thousands of miles.

"Most of our guys will take their bees downwards 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 beloved 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'southward highways. "They load them upward on trucks and bring them dorsum to Montana where they banquet on weeds and wildflowers for several months."

It'south an agri-concern model that many fence is indispensable in the 21st century world of nutrient production, merely is not without repercussions or detractors.

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

Great Falls beekeeper Brian Rogers inspects a hive southwest of Highwood

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

Outset in the early 1970s, notwithstanding, beekeepers across Europe and Northward 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 xc percent of their honey bees in a single flavour.

The cause of what is now referred to every bit "colony collapse disorder" is still debated today. Everything from pesticides and poor nutrition, to jail cell phone towers and parasites has been blamed, but no one causative amanuensis has been proven to exist the disorder's unmarried 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 trouble is that bees, like whatever other organism, can only tolerate a certain corporeality 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 respond."

It is non the first fourth dimension a massive loss of beloved bees has been observed. In 1904, a mysterious illness near 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 manufacture.

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 contempo U.Due south. Department of Agriculture written report found that roughly 46 percent of surveyed hives had potentially lethal Varroa mite levels.

A honey bee with a parasitic Verroa mite attached to its back. Verroa mites are a major cause of colony death in honey bees worldwide

According to Great Falls apiculturist Brian Rogers, problems such as colony collapse disorder and widespread infection by Varroa mites should be viewed as a part of the natural cycle — all-time dealt with past supporting the selective procedure by which the hardiest bees survive to pass on their genetic traits to a new generation of more resilient love 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 nosotros live."

Rogers began his career as a apiculturist before long 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 enquiry and easily-on experience. Today Rogers manages more 50 hives, and has developed a local variety of beloved bees well adapted to northcentral Montana.

"I of the hives we're going to go work today was 1 that was inside a structure for five years with null 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 adjusted to over hundreds of thousands of years.

The answers to preserving Montana bees and its dearest 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 Programme pastures or on the margins of cropland.

"It'due south a fabulous thought," Lay said. "Bees like a diversity of pollen and nectar sources. All those kinds of things are skilful for them."