Industrial exploitation of bees

Unfortunately, modern life has turned domestication of animals into industrial exploitation.  Honey bees have been particularly hard hit by the transition. By custom, small farmers have kept one or two hives to help with pollination of vegetables and fruit flowers.  With a season’s work complete, the farmer then feels entitled to usurp any excess honey. 

Until recently, commercial keepers of honeybees, just like small farmers, counted on two benefits from members of their hives: pollination and honey.  That is to say, large commercial bee operations counted on two profit centers: the sale of honey and hive rental fees for pollination services of their bees.

In 2003, however, the price of honey fell drastically and drove most American beekeepers out of the honey market.  That year, China alone exported 22 million pounds of honey to the United States. American honey producers complained about artificially low prices. In 2008, the federal government imposed "anti-dumping" import duties on Chinese honey. To avoid the duties, China sold to other countries who relabeled the product. The saga became a major food scandal when an American honey packer admitted buying cheap, illegal honey.

As honey profits receded for American beekeepers, the necessity of profits moved pollinating services to the fore.  Thus began a grand migration.

Instead of bees staying close to home and foraging locally, commercial beekeepers now use forklifts to load hundreds of hives onto flatbed trucks.  Collectively, these trucks cart tens of billions of bees around the country.  The largest American itinerant hive-keeper routinely assembles a caravan of 20 trucks to cart his bees from Florida to the West Coast.  Half of all of North American industrial bees and their keepers converge on the chilly orchards of California’s Central Valley in February to service the almond crop.