Ever been to a Farmer's Market and picked up a jar of honey advertised as "organic?" Is it organic? And if you're a beekeeper, has a consumer ever asked you if your honey is organic? How do you know?
May is a few months away, but already there's strong interest in the line-up of speakers at the UC Davis Bee Symposium, set Saturday, May 9 in the UC Davis Conference Center. The theme? "Keeping Bees Healthy." An excellent topic.
The word is "bees" and "almonds" are their world. Right this very minute there are about 1.7 million colonies of bees pollinating California almonds. Since it takes two colonies to pollinate one acre, and California doesn't have that many bees, beekeepers throughout the nation trucked in some 1.
"Bee health" is on the minds of beekeepers, scientists, farmers, growers, gardeners, environmentalists and generally, everyone who cares about bees. Which should be everyone.
Quick! What do you think of when someone mentions "honey bees and mosquitoes" in the same sentence? Honey bees are the pollinators, the beneficial insects. Infected mosquitoes transmit killer diseases such as malaria and dengue; they are our most dangerous insect enemies on the planet.
