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May 14, 2007

Bee season | High price of blueberries helps growers absorb spike in pollination costs

By Joseph R. Thompson
Maine blueberry growers are facing a mounting challenge this spring ˆ— not because pomegranates are giving blueberries a run for their money as America's antioxidant of choice, but because of a national bee shortage.

For the past two decades, beekeepers across the country have seen their stocks of bees shrink by as much as 90%, the result, some say, of a large-scale infestation of mites that cause bees to leave the hive and never return. For farmers who rely on industrial-sized beekeeping operations to pollinate their crops, such as blueberry growers in Maine, the bee shortage means sharply higher costs for those pollination services.

It's enough to give growers like Lincoln Sennett a case of sticker shock. "The prices of blueberries are very high right now," says Sennett. "But at some point, if blueberry prices drop back down again to more historical levels [pollination is] going to be a very expensive part of our business."

Talking from his work shop in Florida where he winters his colonies, Sennett, the owner of Albion-based Swan's Honey, knows both bees and blueberries. He's kept bees as a hobby since college and commercially for the past 13 years. Along with his 700 hives, he also has 150 acres of blueberry fields in Machias.

Sennett says pollination prices jumped this year from $60 a hive to $93 a hive, and he heard rumors of hives going for as much as $115, as bees are brought in from far-flung bee-raising territories such as Texas and California. Even with the price increase, Sennett says the demand for hives is still strong. "There's pretty much a shortage on the whole East Coast," he says. "But there are enough bees out there as long as the price goes high enough."

According to Sennett, record prices for blueberries are a key reason growers are able to absorb the increased hive costs. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's preliminary statistics, Maine's 74.6 million-pound wild blueberry crop last year sold at 81 cents a pound, up from 66 cents in 2005. Even as hive costs continue to rise, Sennett guesses that growers will simply put out fewer hives this spring and hope the bees get the job done. "People will put out two hives to the acre rather than three," he says. "But I doubt they'd stop putting bees on the land."

Counting hives
The bee problem, dubbed "colony collapse disorder," or CCD, can reduce a colony of 50,000 bees to just a queen and a handful of brood, according to Tony Jadczak, Maine state apiarist and bee inspector.

According to bee experts, between 1985 and 2005, when the last bee census was taken, the national bee population dropped from 4.5 million colonies to 2.37 million colonies due to two different mite infestations, which also wiped out the country's native honey bee population. And now most agricultural areas simply don't have enough native pollinators to match the demand. The decline sparked a request from Sen. Susan Collins in mid-April for USDA action on the problem.

Usually, the hives found in Maine blueberry fields follow a pollination circuit along the Eastern Seaboard as beekeepers move their stock in sync with various crops like blueberries in Maine, apples in Pennsylvania, cotton in Georgia and the citrus crops of Florida. Since Sennett focuses on honey production, his bees pollinate one crop per season and then make honey until they cluster for winter and he returns them to Florida.

The bee problem is a major concern for farmers who work the state's 60,000 acres of wild blueberry barrens. Every year towards the end of May, pollinators contracted with blueberry growers bring in 50,000-60,000 hives as the barrens begin to bloom with the first of the white bell-shaped flowers on plants growers hope will eventually provide 16.5% of the world's blueberries. Jadczak expects growers to import even more hives this year due to an increase in overall production acres across the state. "Demand for bees have gone up as the number [of bees] has gone down," he observes, which is why some observers think that the higher costs of pollination may not result in sharply higher costs for blueberries in the grocery store.

David Yarborough, the blueberry specialist for the University of Maine's Cooperative Extension's blueberries and cranberries program, agrees with Sennett's conclusion that Maine blueberry growers are unlikely to stop pollinating with honeybees. "[Growers are] willing to pay more for the bees because they're getting more for the blueberries," says Yarborough.

Even one hive greatly increases production on the barrens, according to Yarborough. "For an investment on that $90 [to rent a hive of bees], growers get an average of a thousand pounds more blueberries," says Yarborough ˆ— or $810 more revenue at current berry prices.

The magnitude of the short-term effects of the hive price increase will be contingent on how much processors will pay for growers' blueberries. And, according to Yarborough, it's too early to predict what this year's wild blueberry crop will look like in terms of prices and size. "But overall the number of buds on the plants look very strong this year," says Yarborough. "All the factors aren't in yet, but we're starting out it pretty good shape."

And that's a good thing because blueberry prices might be reaching an upper limit. According to Barry Schneider, president of Cleveland, Ohio-based Agvest Inc., which runs a processing plant in Franklin, the high blueberry prices might be good for growers but may hurt the industry as a whole.

About 80% of Schneider's berries are resold to the value-added market, baked in muffins and pies, and when prices reach too high, those bakeries begin finding alternatives, like using bits of apples dyed blue. Schneider declined to speculate on where that ceiling might be but indicated some consumers already found it. "Last year historical users of blueberries cut back on stuff," says Schneider. "I know of one large pie company that stopped making blueberry pies because of the price of blueberries."

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