Bruce and Stacy Wilmer have provided pollination services to farms in California and Minnesota for decades, beginning after Bruce purchased bees from a beekeeper he worked with during college in 1985.

"Right now, we're shipping the bees from California to Minnesota to pollinate the crops for the farmers," Stacy Wilmer, co-owner of Wilmer Honey, said. "They're pollinating canola, sunflower, sweet clover—we do that for the farmers in northwestern Minnesota, and that's also where our honey is produced."

When we met, the Wilmer Honey owners were getting ready to work on avocado and lemon trees at Cam Lam Farm in California.

The Lamb family has worked with Wilmer Honey for years, since the essential pollinator plays a critical role in crop development. Bees are an asset that contributes significantly to the production of fruits, vegetables and nuts—industries that play major roles in California agriculture.

Stacy Wilmer said Minnesota beekeepers also work in Florida or Mississippi, but California is especially popular because of almond pollination season, which requires more than 2 million bee colonies.

"Almond pollination is a source of income for many beekeepers when honey prices are at their lowest," she added.

Transporting bees—often around 20,000 hives—is no small feat. Wilmer emphasized the importance of reliable truckers, especially during the hotter months.

"The beehives get loaded at night, and the truckers know that they have to keep moving during the day and keep the air circulating through that net and the beehives," Wilmer explained. "They can't stop in the middle of the day and get fuel when it's 80° because the bees will just come boiling out of those boxes. So, you have to have a good trucker."

The three-day trip to northern Minnesota ends with the crew unloading the bees and placing them in different yard locations to let them do their jobs.

Varroa mite

Beekeeping can be a rewarding but difficult business, especially because bees are vulnerable to diseases, changing weather and pesticides. Right now, national beekeepers are dealing with a deadly and invasive challenge: the varroa mite.

The parasitic mite feeds on both developing and adult bees, is found throughout the U.S., and currently has no cure—only treatments.

A survey by Project Apis m., which tracks U.S. colony losses and includes data from 842 beekeepers around the country, reports that 1.6 million bee colonies were lost over the past winter. The varroa mite was a top cause, and the Wilmer Honey team was among those affected.

"A lot of people had bee lost across the nation as we did, and that's because of the varroa mite, which we're having a hard time getting a handle on," Wilmer said. "They're wondering now if this mite hasn't started to carry different viruses."

She said they lost half of their colonies. The last time they had to buy bees was in 2017, also due to colony loss caused by varroa mites. Since then, the couple and their business partners have focused on rebuilding hive numbers and purchasing more bees.

She says the beekeeping community is staying on top of the issue, but it's a process. One of the efforts is trying to "genetically make queens who keep their hives cleaner and hygienic." They call them "hygienic queens."

But this solution is only for smaller-scale beekeepers, Wilmer said. There's been an increase in labor needs in the industry due to a growing need for more medication, hive manipulation and supplemental feeding.

"All these things are for the small hobbyists," Wilmer explained. "When you have 20,000 hives to take care of, it's a lot of manpower, and I can tell you that it has become so much manpower to take care of these hives versus what it was back in 1986 when we started."

Wilmer said varroa mites are a major immediate concern, but beekeepers also have to look out for other threats like the changing environment and the effects of pesticides and insecticides on their colonies.

"You know, insecticides and pesticides have increased in the world, and the worker bee will bring back the pollen that has chemicals in it," Wilmer explained. "And there's curiosity if that's part of that colony collapse disorder that is going on—if that pollen with chemicals is fed to the baby bees and they make their wax out of pollen that has chemicals in it."

Even if there are a lot of moving parts to being a beekeeper, Stacy says the team and all the people working to take care of Wilmer Honey bees enjoy the work—and that their favorite honey is canola, "because of its creamy consistency."