So in 1990, Bret Adee and his wife, Connie, packed their two children (they now have four) into a truck loaded with beehives
and moved to Bakersfield, Calif. Today, the pollination business provides two-thirds of the company’s revenue and all of its profits, Mr. Adee said.
Like other commercial beekeepers struggling with the population decline, Mr. Adee has stayed afloat, in part, by acquiring the colonies of
other beekeepers: The number of commercial beekeepers (those with more than 300 hives) has dropped, though no one is certain by how many.
“We still are trying to tease out what combination of factors really leads to beehive health declines.”
Adee Honey Farms was started by Vernon Adee, Mr. Adee’s grandfather, during the Great Depression after he received a letter from his brother in Missouri
that read: “I can’t sell chickens or hogs, but I’m doing well with honey.
On average, Mr. Adee places two hives per acre of almond trees.
“The more you study it, the more obvious it becomes: the relationship between the pesticides
that have been sprayed everywhere over the last 10 years and what’s happening to bees,” Mr. Adee said.
“Over the last five years, I think this small industry could easily have lost $1.2 billion worth of bees,” Mr. Adee said.
But as that business began to suffer from competition from Chinese
and Latin American honey producers, Bret Adee and his brother Kelvin, sons of Richard Adee, figured they needed to develop another business to keep the company afloat.
“It’s kind of like a grapevine,” Mr. Adee said.