Jan 01, 2020

A Pollination Story

We monitored and tracked 17 hives across 4 different Almond Orchards between Bakersfield and Madera California by installing HiveGenies counting incoming and outgoing bees from January 15th to March 26th, 2019.

We monitored and tracked 17 hives across 4 different Almond Orchards between Bakersfield and Madera California by installing HiveGenies counting incoming and outgoing bees from January 15th to March 26th, 2019.

  • Strong hives pollinate twice as much as average hives and 13 times as much as weak hives.
  • Focus on bee flights when renting bees can be a better indicator of colony strength than the number of frames.
  • Bee population only increased in pesticide-free orchards.
  • Was observed higher bee mortality in areas where pesticides were applied.
  • Beehive tracking cross-referenced with bee counting can give valuable information for better beekeeping strategies
  • Cold stored bees started foraging earlier but averaged the same as other hives.
  • Cold weather doesn’t decrease pollination activity, rain does delay it but bees seem to catch up when the weather breaks.


Bee flights vs. time of day per month by Pallet:


We monitored and tracked 17 hives across 4 different Almond Orchards between Bakersfield and Madera California from January 15th to March 26th, 2019.

The monitoring method was performed by installing seventeen HiveGenies in four different pallets. Each pallet went to a different beekeeper and a different Almond field. The HiveGenies were capable of counting bees in both directions as they entered and left the hive, temperature, and relative humidity inside the hive (at the brood box) and outside the hive were also measured as well as light intensity and hive weight.


Table 1. Cumulative bee flights recorded: Almond Pollination in California from January 13 to March 23, 2019

Group D was deliberately placed HiveGenies in a medium strength hive (R58 with 4 frames of bees) and a weak hive (R60 with only 2 frames of bees) to be able to monitor the differences in pollination activity against strong 8 frame hives.

A total of 3.22 million bees were counted exiting the hives, and 3.04 million bees returning for a cumulative bee loss of 5.8% in little more than two months, which is surprisingly low! However, a bee population explosion should’ve taken place due to the overabundance of food.

When viewed by area of the two pallets in Bakersfield, pallet A gained 13% of bees, and pallet B lost 13% of bees. It is worth noting that the Orchard owner in pallet A said nothing is sprayed while bees are present. This is the only pallet that

gained bees. On the other hand, pallet B with the largest bee losses was placed in a high pesticide use area with a historic high mortality rate so we can’t rule intoxication out. These pallets also experienced close to 80% of hive mortality after the season terminated.

On individual bases, hives lost anywhere from 28% of their colony, while others gained 32% of bees (almost 80,000 bees grow) in the season. Since a large number of bee gains or losses were on an individual colony and not pallet wide, we attribute these changes to drifting.

The two pallets in Madera (groups C and D) lost 11 and 6% of their bees. Group D was the only one located in between an Almond and a Citrus field, although no citrus flowers were spotted during the almond season. Also, the beekeeper that owns group D informed of fungicide application on one day, but the use of the chemicals was made before dawn when a low number of bees were flying, not detection of bee losses was observed after the fungicide application.

The bulk of the pollination activity was done in February with 65% of the trips. January represented only 10% while March 25% of total trips.

The analysis of the data obtained (an average of 178,909 total bees in) per colony for the season. It can be concluded that for every group of four hives, at least one or two severely underperform while the remaining makeup for the lost work by making almost twice the trips of the underperformers.

While total trip difference between a high performing hive and a weak one is as much as 13 times (not counting the weak colonies R58 and R60 that were monitored as control), when compared pallet by pallet the difference in trips reduces to 2 to 1, still a big difference of half a million trips for the season but not as much as individual pallets. Keep in mind that all these hives were cataloged as healthy hives by the eight frame criteria by beekeepers and beehive inspectors when deployed. This contrast shows that the eight frame criterion doesn’t guarantee of high performing bees. Bee flight counting is a much more accurate way of selecting high performing hives.

Table 3 shows the effects of weather and bee flights.


Table 3.
Weather vs. bee flights. Above, bee flight activity per device and month. Below, cumulative trips (red curve) vs. outside temperature (green curve). Relative humidity outside the hive is the yellow curve. The temperature inside the hive is light blue.

Analyzing weather effects, we can see that February was the coldest month (dark green curve below), but also the one with the highest flights (red curve). Note that invariably flying activity is highest when humidity drops (yellow curve below), with all peaks around noon. In March, the warmest month, the bee activity was not as high due to a fading bloom.

We can conclude:

  • Growers should focus on bee flight when renting bees instead of the number of frames.
  • Bee flight counting could be the best indicator of pollination performance and colony strength.
  • Bee population on pesticide-free orchards shows population gain.
  • Colony losses were observed only on orchards where pesticides were applied.
  • Cold stored bees started foraging earlier but averaged the same as other hives.
  • Cold weather doesn’t decrease pollination activity; rain does delay it, and bees seem to catch up when the weather breaks.
  • During the beginning and the end of the season, the colonies had nothing to eat (averaging at almost zero flights) while waiting for the bloom and waiting for relocation.