Bees turn almond flowers into nuts

Almond trees require an insect intermediary to pollinate its flowers. An almond flower is only an inch and a half across.  Only a bee can turn each flower into a nut.  The flower is self-incompatible; that is, it cannot create a nut using its own pollen.  The flower depends on bees to bring it pollen from a different almond cultivar planted nearby.  To further complicate the process, an almond flower is more receptive to pollination on its opening day.  Pollination must be complete by day four or the flower will not set fruit.

Factory-sized fields require an industrial-sized pollination operation.  This is too big a job for wild gypsy bees or feral bees escaped from local hives. It involves hiring the services of more than a million hives, providing temporary employment to more than 20 billion bees.  And, therein lies the problem.

In Roman times, the beekeeper tended the bees and the bees tended his crops.  But industrial farming rearranges the formula.  Almond farmers have no time to care for bee hives, even though the insect residents are essential to the almond crop.  Instead, industrial orchardists leave bee tending to industrial beekeepers.  In the process, each farmer becomes a specialized monocropper: one with almonds, one with bees. 

National and local newscasts carry reports of strange, unexplained disappearances of bees in the Central Vally.  Thousands of worker bees leave in the morning and simply don’t return at night.  Other strange bee behavior also occurs.  The queen remains active in the hive.  The brood remains safe in capped wax cells.  Adequate food for the hive is present.  Why would the workers abandon all this abundance?