Business & Tech

How Millions of Bees Find Their Way to Hudson NH

This year 8 million bees hitched a ride to Hudson from Georgia with beekeeper Alden Marshall.

Every spring Alden Marshall makes the 2,100 round-trip journey from his home in Hudson, NH, to Claxton, Ga., and back to pick up honey bees. Millions of them.

He's not sure exactly how many, but this time around he brought 900 3-pound packages, and each package contains about 13,000 bees. That's about 8 million bees, give or take a few hundred thousand, he says.

It's a ritual Marshall has performed for years, something he does so local beekeepers can continue to keep bees, which are a vital part of the ecosystem. Without bees we don't have pollination. And without pollination, we don't have much to eat.

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In recent years, Colony Collapse Disorder has been hitting New England hives hard. Marshall and others are struggling to figure out what they can do to boost the health of their hives and overwinter them more successfully. 

According to the 2012-2013 Winter Loss Survey results, just released by beeinformed.org, about 31.1 percent of managed honey bee colonies in the United States were lost this winter, an increase in loss of more than 9 points, or 42 percent over last year's total losses, which were estimated at about 21.9 percent. Continued hive losses threaten the livelihoods of both beekeepers and farmers.

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Marshall's bees had a rough winter, which was compounded by another blow from mother nature.

This year Marshall's trip to Georgia was delayed more than a month – unseasonably cold weather down south meant the bees weren't activating, which meant they weren't populating the hives, which meant there weren't enough to go around.

"We had to wait for them to build up their hives," Marshall said. 

And that meant local beekeepers were waiting, too. Carolyn Marshall – Queen Bee to most who know the couple – had to make calls and explain the circumstances for the delay – even fielding some not so nice comments from angry beekeepers.

"It's a ripple effect," said Marshall. "When the crops are in bloom you like to have your pollinating bees. If they aren't there, it has an impact. They can't do their job, and all you have left are the wild pollinators, which don't do as good a job," explained Marshall. "It definitely affects local farmers."

Michael Cross, manager at Mack's Apples in Londonderry, said that while he depends on Marshal's bees to pollinate his pumpkin crop for the fall, spring pollination takes more bees than Marshall can provide for his 400 acres of apples. 

"Alden's bees don't overwinter very well. He has 12 hives here and a lot time times they don't make it. So we bring in 102 hives from Merrimack Valley Apiaries out of Tewksbury, Mass.. He gets his bees form Louisiana – they came in May 6 and will be leaving May 18. Then, they're on their way to Maine for the blueberry crop," Cross said.


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