From the Fields - Caroline Yelle

By Caroline Yelle, Solano County beekeeper

Beekeepers are making sure the mite levels stay low. With the rain, the bees are going to rest a little bit inside their hives. When it gets cold, beekeepers treat bees by fogging oxalic into the beehive entrance, so you don’t disturb the bees. This way, we can make sure that mite levels stay low, so the bees are ready for almond pollination.

Right now, we’re rating our hives, looking at how many frames of bees we have per hive and making sure this number doesn’t go down. By January, we will start giving the bees pollen patties, which is protein, for them to build up to get an average of eight frames per hive. Hopefully, the rain brings new sources of nectar.

A drop in the almond price is worrisome. Some almond growers are asking for fewer hives per acre (for pollination). Beekeepers have been talking about the price and that the price offered will be lower, but the problem is our expenses are higher. If they lower the price, we are at a fine line. We don’t even know if keeping hives for a whole year will be beneficial for us.

Many bees come to California from out of state for pollination. We saw two big hurricanes hit Florida. We’re talking about 50,000 hives lost just in Florida in the first hurricane, so that means fewer hives may be coming in from out of state this year. The price of fuel to come to California may take hives out of the market this year.

For the honey crop, this was obviously a dry year, but for some reason, the honey was really good in July and August. The big honey season used to be in July. We saw this year and last year that August was the good (honey production) month. The price for honey was around $2.75 per pound, which is really good.