The Price Honeybees May Pay for Biofuel
Financial incentives to shrink the carbon footprint of air travel could turbocharge the destruction of grasslands critical to pollination.
The expansion of biofuel-driven corn and soybean cultivation across the US midwest could diminish the diverse vegetation essential to bee populations.
Photographer: tomaszm83/iStockphoto/Getty ImagesThe Millers are a family of beekeepers in Gackle, North Dakota, a tiny farming town about 70 miles east of Bismarck. It was five decades ago when they began their labors here amid the endless swaths of sweet clover, alfalfa and the variety of other plant life that bees thrive on.
North Dakota has long been a top honey producer, churning out 40 million pounds every year and bringing in close to $67 million. All of it courtesy of these undulating fields of wild grasses, and the buzzing insects who return to them each year.