Plenty of other insects serve as pollinators, but few are as effective as bees. One look at the fly in the picture helps explain why: no pollen baskets on the legs, a lot less hair to trap pollen grains, etc., and no social organization or communication methods to effectively deploy the troops to a patch of flowers.

Bee rentals and migratory beekeeping

Since U.S. beekeeper Nephi Miller first began moving his hives to different areas of the country for the winter of 1908, migratory beekeeping has become widespread in America.

Bee rental for pollination is a crucial element of U.S. agriculture, which could not produce anywhere near its current levels with native pollinators alone. U.S. beekeepers collectively earn much more from renting their bees out for pollination than they do from honey production.

Researchers are concerned that trucking colonies around the country to pollinate crops, where they intermingle with other bees from all over, helps spread viruses and mites among colonies. Additionally, such continuous movement and re-settlement is considered by some a strain and disruption for the entire hive, possibly rendering it less resistant to all sorts of systemic disorder.

U.S. bee rental travel extent

One major U.S. beekeeper reports moving his hives from Idaho to California in January, then to apple orchards in Washington in March, to North Dakota two months later, and then back to Idaho by November—a journey of several thousand kilometres. Others move from Florida to New Hampshire or to Texas; nearly all visit California for the almond bloom in January.

Beekeepers in Europe and Asia are generally far less mobile, with bee populations moving and mingling within a smaller geographic extent (although some keepers do move longer distances, it is much less common).

This wider spread and intermingling in the U.S. has resulted in far greater losses from Varroa mite infections in recent years.

[Wikipedia]

Jan Karlsbjerg´s last blog ..Silent letters in English: Almost all of them