THE BUZZ ABOUT BEES; KENNETT BEEKEEPER LEASES MILLIONS TO HELP FARMERS DURING NATIONAL SHORTAGE

The bees maintain the core temperature of the hive at 92 degrees even in cool weather.

KENNETT -- Anything can be rented -- even honeybees.

Neal Bergman, a beekeeper at Kennett, has more than 45,000,000 -- that's 45 million -- bees currently leased to California almond growers.

"Almonds are blooming on the West Coast," said Bergman, the largest "keeper of bees" in Missouri and president of the Missouri Beekeepers Association.

Bergman, who owns Delta Bee Co. near Kennett, shipped about 1,500 hives of Missouri honeybees to California by tractor-trailer truck.

That's a lot of bees!

"Each hive, or colonly, has more than 30,000 bees," said Bergman.

But Bergman raises a lot of bees -- many more than the 1,500 hives currently on the West Coast.

"We have 8,000 hives," said Bergman, who was in Scott County this week to check on some of his hives. A bee hive can have as few as 10 bees, or as many as 80,000. "Most will have about 30,000 this time of year," said Bergman. That translates into more than 240 million bees, which could increase during the busy season to more than 500 million bees as the hives grow.

Honey is the main product for Bergman's bee industry.

"We ship honey out in 55-gallon drums," he said. Most of the Bergman honey goes to Sioux Bee Honey Co. in Sioux City, Iowa.

Bergman bee-leasing is a sideline, but still a very important business.

Honeybees are vital to the nation's vegetable and fruit industry, along with soybean, wheat and soybean production.

"Two-thirds of all the food a person eats is dependent on the honey bee for pollination," said Ray Nabors, an area extension entomologist for the University of Missouri. "You turn a colony of bees loose on a flowering crop and they won't quit until have worked the entire crop."

Bergman is one of a number of commercial beekeepers in Missouri who produce more than 1.5 million pounds of honey each year, adding well over $1 million to the state's economy each year.

"Some farmers have a few hives of bees," said Nabors. But, mostly, farmers depend on wild bees and beekeepers to pollinate their crops each year.

But, the nation's bees are working themselves to death, said Nabors.

The expression "busy as bees" is well justified. "Honeybees never give up," said Nabors. "They just keep on working. " During he past two years, the buzz of bees may be less noticeable.

"There were fewer of them," say Nabors and Bergman.

The bees have been under attack by mites, said Nabors. Over the past couple of years, there have more and more bee deaths.

"Wild bees in Missouri are virtually gone," said Nabors.

This is bad news for farmers.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated that about 3.5 million acres of U.S. fruit, vegetables, fruit, oilseed and legume seed crops depend on insect pollination. Another 65 million acres derive some insect pollination.

"More than 80 percent of insect pollination is accomplished by honey bees," said Nabors, who added that Bootheel cotton and soybean farmers lost as much as $2.5 to $3 million during each of the past two years.

"The bee shortage has cost the Missouri cotton industry alone about $2 million each of the last two years. "This economic loss does not include losses in crops like apples, melons, berries and alfalfa."

It will probably be another three to five years before scientists develop mite-resistant bees.

Nationally, the U.S. is at a low ebb of less than 3 million colonies of bees, down form the more than 10 million colonies reported during the 1970s.

"We don't have enough bees go to around," said Nabors.

The bee shortage will be a big topic when the Missouri Bee Association meets next month at Columbia.

"There is a shortage of bees and beekeepers," said Bergman. "The March 15 conference will feature a number of speakers and will be discussing the overall bee shortage."

Bergman will also be a speaker at the annual fruit growers conference, to be held next week at West Plains.

"We urge people to get into beekeeping," said Bergman. "We'd like to see small acreage farmers, fruit growers and even gardeners put in a hive of bees."

Bergman bees over the next few months can be found throughout Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois.

"We have bees from Cape Girardeau County South in Missouri," said Bergman.

"We use pallets to place hives on," said Bergman. "Then, we deliver them to fields, and the bees take it from there.

The bees in California will be returned to Missouri in time for watermelons, cantaloupes, squash, pumpkin crops and other fruit and vegetable crops, said Bergman. "The season continues into soybeans, cotton and pumpkins."