The honeybees at Brookfield Farm don’t do a lot of traveling. I have bee yards. The bees move into the bee yards and live there. If I do splits, those young hives are moved to a new location.
Other honeybees, however, do go on road trips. I recently visited beekeeper Bruce Bowen as he and his assistant, Pat Ray, loaded 818 hives onto three trucks. The bees then hit the road to California where they are now pollinating almonds.
Back in December the bees were prepared for their trip. Hives were checked for population density and ample food stores. Pallets were cleaned. Timing was good. There was good weather then, following that we had a bit of snow.
The bees that were heading south to California were gathered in one holding yard a few days before the trucks arrived. Then late on a sunny afternoon and into a calm night, the bees were loaded onto the trucks. One comment I heard from each driver was that they were pleased at Bruce’s organization of his hives, which allowed the bees to be loaded efficiently onto the trucks.
(I must pause for a moment and apologize for the layout of this blog posting. For some reason, the computer in charge at wordpress keeps changing the placement of the images and words. After 5 trys I’ve thrown in the towel. Thus, the words preceed all the images. Computers: can’t live with them, can’t do business without them)
A good, tight load is critical to the transportation of bees. Equally important is cleanliness. These trucks must pass an agricultural inspection before they cross into the state of California. Inspectors check for unwanted insects, dirt, and grass seeds.
Each of these pallets and hives were cleaned in December. They were cleaned again on the day of loading, before they were loaded onto the trucks. After loading the pallets of bee hives are covered in a net, which can be seen in the above photo. This not only stabilizes the load, but keeps the bees from flying when the truck is stopped during the trip to the California almond groves. One driver told me that he always tries to park away from other trucks when he stops. Sometimes, he said, that just is not possible, but he is quickly the only truck in the area once others realize he is hauling bees. Their fear is unfounded, but not uncommon.
Bowen and Ray loaded two trucks on the first day. The third truck arrived, as scheduled, two days later. It rained that day. Thus these images show three different weather situations we encountered when loading bees: a sunny afternoon, a clear night, and a rainy day.
The wonderful drivers of these huge riggs loaded with bees were:
Forest, of F & L Trucking, Battle Mtn., Nevada
Steve Easterday, Marsing, Idaho
The driver’s whose name I didn’t catch from White’s Bee & Berry Farm
The operation was fascinating. Did it make me suddenly want to run a 1,000 hive operation and ship honeybees to the California almonds for pollination? Not in your life. I think I’m happy, for now, to keep the Brookfield Farm bees in bee yards. But I think that, in the U.S., we all need to be a bit grateful to the beekeepers whose bees travel to pollinate our crops, and to the drivers who get the bees safely to the crops over thousands of miles of freeways. Without these hard wonderful working folks, there would be very little food in the grocery stores in the U.S.
great blog! we were on that third truck that year. what terrible weather trying to get our bees there in time to go! thanks for the pics!
Thank you – glad you liked the photos — did you go to almonds this year? If so, how did it go?
we did! bees just got home today actually! they did very well. everyone that went made it home safely and alive. a little bit of swarming, but we are still in great shape for pollination up here. some of the growers are wanting bees as early as the 15th of april! it should be a great year!
That’s brilliant – I’m so glad it worked out for you…. It does look to be a good year.
Very Informative post. I am trying to reach someone that has info on transporting bees for almonds this coming season. Do I call up some almond growers? Do I have to use a broker of some sort? If so what are the fees? I currently have 600 hives and plan on having 2000 before season starts.
I’m going to send you over to Joe McConnaughy, Darrington WA (facebook him) – he does more work with Bruce Bowen, who does the Almonds in that post – than I do these days (Bruce is useless on the net)…so tell Joe I sent you to him, and see if he can get some info out of Bruce. My general knowledge is that unless you have a friend who has almonds, you must go though a broker. You also need to set up the transportation issues – the semis who haul bees. It’s specialized…they company Bruce used when I was there had a very good driver. If you don’t get an answer, write again, and I’ll see who else I can send you to for info.
Steve at Sequal Trucking has 4 trucks who specialize in bees. They take them all over the country. They know what to look for when loading and crossing. He has Team drivers who can get a load across the country in 2 days. His email is nguyensteve73@yahoo.com Hope that helps. 🙂
Thanks for the tip Cain – perhaps someone can use it. Those were Bruce’s bees, not mine. Mine just hang out in bee yards. It was fun helping Bruce load them and get them off to California, but I think I’m better set for bee yards (though I really need to find an easy way to load hives into a pick up solo) Thanks again for the tip about Sequal Trucking…
We specialize in Bee Hauling
good to know – I’ll leave your comment on the page,