nature
current
by
Alisa Opar
Josh Cochran
illustration by
The New Bees on the Block
Honeybees are down for the count, but their native cousins are just getting warmed up
In many ways, the Rominger brothers are
a lot like their neighbors in California’s Central Valley. For starters, they’re farmers—they
grow rice, alfalfa, wheat, and sunflowers on
a 3,000-acre plot at Butler Farm. But Bruce
Rominger knows that his family has a reputation
for “being out there a little bit.” That’s because
their land also supports scientific research—
including a project that aims to bolster native
bees, which could take on some of the pollination duties of beleaguered honeybees.
38 | february-march 2008
Honeybees play a vital role in American
agriculture—they pollinate one-third of all our
crops. But in 2006, colony collapse disorder hit
nearly a quarter of US commercial beekeeping operations, which lost between 50 and 90
percent of their hives. The cause of the die-offs
remains unknown: Suspects include pesticides, parasitic mites, and a virus. Though pollination nearly returned to normal in 2007, the
crisis of the previous year highlighted agriculture’s overreliance on honeybees. That’s where
Butler Farm comes in. “We’re interested in increasing biodiversity without sacrificing farm
production,” says Rominger, who has been
farming for 27 years.