The Beekeeper's Lament Quotes

“In Spain, hilly terrain and antiquated planting and harvest practices keep farmers from retrieving more than about 100 pounds [of almonds] per acre. Growers in the Central Valley, by contrast can expect up to 3000 pounds an acre. But for all their sophisticated strategies to increase yield and profitability, almond growers still have one major problem - pollination. Unless a bird or insect brings the pollen from flower to flower, even the most state-of-the-art orchard won't grow enough nuts. An almond grower who depends on wind and a few volunteer pollinators in this desert of cultivation can expect only 40 pounds of almonds per acre. If he imports honey bees, the average yield is 2,400 pounds per acre, as much as 3,000 in more densely planted orchards. To build an almond, it takes a bee.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Because of the varroa mite, wild honey bees are now, for all practical purposes, extinct in the United States.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Let all your motions about your hives be gentle and slow. Accustom your bees to your presence: never crush or injure them, or breathe upon them in any operation,” wrote Langstroth.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Dying bees are symbols of environmental sin, of the synthetic crimes of the chemical industry.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“In 1990, there were 3.3 million bee colonies; in 2006, fewer than 2.5 million remained. In the wild, honey bees have disappeared entirely.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Miller likes his hives to weigh 130 pounds going into winter—75 pounds of honey (most beekeepers aim for 55–60 pounds); 55 pounds of bees, wood, and hardware.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Entomologists have come to believe that bees require a more varied diet than monoculture can provide.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“A bee yard had to be close to water and roads, be sheltered from the wind, and get early morning sun—but none of that mattered if there wasn’t a sufficient supply and variety of nectar-producing plants.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“50 percent or more of all imported honey has been transshipped from China through another country.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Singapore—an entirely urban island-city which has no beekeeping industry—exported 2.9 million pounds of honey the year after the ban was imposed, becoming the fourth largest exporter of honey in the world in a matter of months.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“More than ten years after the epidemic in Chinese apiaries, detectable levels of chloramphenicol can still be found in honey from hives exposed to the drug.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“But if you turned it upside down, bubbles rose rapidly to the top—the faster the bubble, the wetter the honey; the wetter the honey, the larger the chance it is adulterated. Good honey—dry honey—has a glacial bubble. You could wait days—multiple seconds, anyhow—for the bubble in Gene Brandi’s sage honey to rise to the top; ditto for Kevin Ward’s star thistle and John Haefeli’s high-altitude clover.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“There is currently no legal, federally regulated “standard of identity” for honey, and “funny honey”—products sold as honey but that may have been “stretched” with water or corn syrup or sucrose or glucose or worse—is widely sold across the United States.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“used for centuries to treat burns and wounds. There are hundreds of studies exploring its benefits: it has been suggested that it can help control diabetes, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, stress, skin conditions, sexual problems, and scores of other maladies.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“The average honey bee will produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of the stuff in her lifetime, returning home from each trip laden with half her weight in nectar and pollen, then transforming that raw nectar into honey through a unique digestive alchemy in which she ingests and regurgitates it a number of times.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“To make a pound of it, the 50,000 or 80,000 bees who live together in a hive at the height of summer will travel a collective fifty-five thousand miles and visit more than two million flowers.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“We cleave to the way things are, not only to hold back a chaotic future, and not only because that is what we know.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“So instead, Brant, Miller, and many other northern plains beekeeping outfits rely on labor brokers who arrange temporary visas for South African workers—mostly white Afrikaaner farmers and twentysomethings looking for adventure and relief from their country’s erratic economy.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“1997, the Honey Bee Breeding Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, imported Russian bees hailing from the Vladivostok area and supplied them to breeders.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“When a queen dies or fails to lay sufficient eggs to keep the colony going, the bees feed royal jelly—a thick, creamy substance secreted by nurse bees—to multiple freshly hatched larvae who would otherwise develop into workers.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Bats have also disappeared in droves thanks to a mysterious ailment called “white nose syndrome.” Bats may have their backers, passionate as any other, but so far, the public has found their plight far less appealing.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“With prodding from industry leaders like Brandi and Hackenberg, the National Honey Bee Advisory Board asked the EPA to ban the product. Instead the EPA called for further testing, allowing the products to remain on the market until the studies’ conclusion in 2014.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“With prodding from industry leaders like Brandi and Hackenberg, the National Honey Bee Advisory Board asked the EPA to ban the product. Instead the EPA called for further testing, allowing the products to remain”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Massive worldwide frog declines, for instance, have been linked to the commonly used weed killer atrazine.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“France banned the products in 1999 after they were linked to major losses in sunflower fields and a disorder that local beekeepers took to calling “mad bee disease.” Sales had also been suspended in Germany, Italy, and Slovenia.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Studies indicate that apiaries miles apart can interchange 3 percent of their bees over the course of just a few weeks.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Every January, 1.5 million hives—somewhere in the vicinity of two thirds of the nation’s bees—are imported to California to fulfill the almond farmers’ pollination demands.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Almonds are California’s leading agricultural export—ahead of raisins, lettuce, avocados, strawberries, and cattle. They book more than twice the revenues of the state’s wine exports.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Almonds are a stone fruit related to cherries, plums, and peaches.”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

“Since 1987, the mite has been the major cause of honey bee mortality across the United States. The nation’s CCD losses pose no comparison. In”
― Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America