Steve Levitt

The almond growers need just about every bee in America to come to California and pollinate the orchards.

Without the bees, the almond industry would collapse.

And unlike with honey, where Chinese bees can do the same job as American bees, it's too far for these foreign bees to travel.

The almond industry needs a thriving American bee population.

What does that mean in terms of economics?

It means that ultimately, it is the almond producers who are hurt the most by cheap foreign honey.

Usually, when the price of honey falls, lots of beekeepers would go out of business.

But the almond industry can't let that happen.

They have to raise pollination fees enough to keep the beekeepers afloat.

If you're an almond producer, that gives you a strong incentive to find ways to grow almonds that don't depend on bees.

What does this mean for the future of beekeeping?

Maybe the answer is in the past, like 700 years in the past.

That's coming up.

We've been talking about the uncertain future of the beekeeping industry.

But let's take a minute to think about the industry's past.

Alex Siposnick is a historian at King's College London who studies the economics of beekeeping in the Middle Ages.

In her research, she found that medieval beekeepers faced the same fundamental problem that Chris Hyatt faces today, a market for their product that kept getting undercut by forces outside their control.

It turns out that people could and did keep bees all over medieval Europe.

However, even back then, the market was vulnerable to fraud.

Today, beekeepers are honey producers and professional pollinators.