In the winter, California receives many visitors travelling there to escape cold temperatures – over 54 billion or so. Alongside regular tourists that escape to the warm, sunny state for winter, around 1.5 million hives carrying billions of honey bees from all over the United States travel there by the truckload.
An earlier article detailed what bees do to keep out the cold but the honey bees here are coming to California from states such as those in the Midwest, where harsh winter storms and below freezing temperatures would destroy many of the colonies. Their owners need to move them somewhere warmer and California’s central coast is the ideal, but also for other reasons.
In addition to the temperature, apiarists now mainly choose California for this purpose over other warm states such as Florida due to the greater rate of pest infestation in the latter state, which has led to the increased use of pesticides – bad news for bees. California is also a main producer of almonds and the bees arrive in winter before almond pollination season begins. During the last ten years the honey bee relocation has occurred, almond acreage has doubled in California, so the bees aren’t the only ones who benefit.