Right now, let's say good morning too the Valley Hives. Keith Roberts, Good morning.
Keith Amy King.
How are you doing great? I wanted to talk to you because last week we had a story about a couple of big problems with the bees, and one of those problems is causing the others. So I wanted to ask you first about the number of bees continues to decline and that's causing the other problem that we're going to talk about. Can we talk a little bit about why that's happening. I know you have some thriving hives up in Chatsworth at the Valley Hive, but the bee population is declining.
Yes, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to talk about this crisis. So very Unfortunately, because of what's going on in Washington, the oxygen has been sucked out of the room, and not a whole lot of media is talking about this. But across the nation, we're facing a record high loss of colonies. We're talking about sixty two percent of hives across the country have collapsed, and some operations are reporting between eighty to one hundred percent.
They've lost all of their hives and they're not going to be able to recover. This has been absolutely devastating, and what is particularly frightening about it is that we still don't know for sure what has occurred to push these numbers into this region. So we went from an average. So a little bit of backstory. Back in seven we were having about a fifteen percent loss of hives, and then because of the four p's, the pests, the pathogens, the pesticide, and the poor nutrition, the numbers went up
to about forty percent. And now something has occurred in the last six months to push that loss another twenty percent into the sixty percent region, which is completely unsustainable. More than one hundred and thirty fruits and vegetables, thirty percent of everything we eat is dependent on honey bees, and so this is a crisis and not a whole lot of people are talking about it.
Okay, and Keith, I like, is there any substitute? I mean, you need the bees, that's what they do, they pollinate. I mean, but if there are no bees, the pollination just can't happen, or there's no other way to do it.
Right, there's not going to be on unlike places in China where they have to do pollination by hand, that's not going to be feasible here at scale at all. Honey Bees are too important to our way of getting food on the table. And beekeepers, quite frankly, are the redheaded stepchild of the agricultural industry. And they don't get the attention that they deserve because it's such a niche industry. But they need help and they need support and this and this is crippling to not only the bee keeper
but to our agriculture. And if people think that the cost of eggs is high, it's about to get real across.
The board because if the bees aren't pollinating that, like one of the big ones right now that we're talking about is that for the almond crop, which is a multi billion dollar business in California, they need those bees because bloom season is right around the corner.
It's now, it's right now, okay, and you're out, and you're absolutely right. They haven't gotten enough bees.
And if you're an almond grower, you.
Can't even get crop insurance unless you can prove you have so many hives per here. And so yeah, this is this is devastating and just in bees alone, just the bee keeping alone, just a little bit of scale, This represents about two hundred and twenty four million dollars of loss and the economic impact across agriculture is going to be around six hundred and thirty four point seven million dollars.
Okay, and then Keith, the other thing that I mentioned that the problem there are two problems. One is that the bee population is God, who knew sixty two percent of the hives of clips. That's just crazy numbers. But that has led to another problem, and that's the shortage of bees, which is leading to people stealing beehives.
Yes, absolutely disgusting.
I think we've all seen the westerns of cattle wrestlers, right, yeah, and today twenty twenty five, what is it.
It's bee wrestling.
And what's really sick about it is that it's where it's basically people who are already bee keepers obviously, because you need to have eat infrastructu to be able to pick up these pallettes of beest. Like these hives are palletized. There's four hives to a palette, and they're coming in and at night and they're and.
Because these these.
Pallets are in the orchard and they can be visible from the road, they kind of mark where they're down, and then they come back at night, they load them up, and you have thirty hives stolen here, fifty hives stolen there, two hundred hives stolen there, and something else that unfortunately bee keepers are getting hit with.
And then Keith, so then the people who are stealing the hives are going and selling them like or renting them to the farmers or something, because the farmers desperately need them for their crops.
So they're going to either take them back to their operation. They're going to take the bees out and put them in their boxes, or they're going to paint over all of the branding and the markings of the rightful owner and then put them back out as up there that they were their hives to begin with. And it's just an absolute tragedy.
Yeah, So, Keith, I know, I mean, it just sounds I didn't realize that the problem was this bad. Is there anything that we can do aside from setting up a little high in our backyard.
Really if you want to be more effective? And this kind of sounds corny and cliche, but it's truth. Buy American honey. Make sure that when you go to the store, you're buying honey that is made in the USA, and that is going to directly help beekeepers. It's going to put money directly in the hands of beekeepers. Another thing that you can do is doing what you're doing right now talk about it, because, like I said at the very beginning, this is not getting the media attention it deserves.
So when Colony Collapsus Order first came on in two thousand and seven, you you heard it everywhere, right, remember all the stories about the collapse and everybody was getting in on it. There were ads from Basket Robbins. I mean, it was everybody knew that the honeybee was in trouble. And now it's the problem has gotten even worse and
you're not hearing about it. So be sure that you're that you're telling people about it, and so spread the word and support American beekeepers by getting American honey and keep doing what you're doing, Amy, and.
Just spread spread this word. Talk to your.
Congress person and make sure that we can get some attention from the government to help bee keepers and.
And try to subsidize some of their losses.
Absolutely. Keith Roberts with the Valley Hive and Chatsworth, it's really a cool place if you want to go and check out the bees and their nursery. It's a beautiful place to go. And thanks so much for all that information, Keith. We'll keep it the spotlight.
Bees.
Bees are friends, we need them.
Thank you so much for this opportunity, and that you take care.
All right, you got it. It's just that is just so freaky, and you know it just it's that whole circle of life thing that one thing is dependent on the next, and the next thing is dependent on the next.
And what's going to happen if they're all gone with our food supply? I mean, that's really scary. Yeah, no kidding,