Walter "Wally" Thurman

One is an insect colony of 30,000 bees...

can be produced in pretty short order.

So if a beekeeper finds that a colony has failed and he needs to replace the bees in the spring,

There are ways that he can create a whole new colony of bees in as little as six weeks.

And beekeepers have, over decades and centuries, developed methods of managing bees that allow them to produce new colonies quickly.

It's called splitting hives.

You have two boxes of bees, one dies, and you split the healthy hive and you place its occupants into the dead hive.

You feed them appropriately and you take care of them.

And then a month or two later, you've got two healthy colonies of bees again.

That's right.

You didn't see evidence of colony collapse disorder in colony numbers, in the price of honey, the price of queen bees, almost nowhere except in early season pollination fees paid by almond growers and a few other growers of similarly early blooming crops.

And the early blooming is the key here.

You have to get your bees out of their winter torpor and get them back to full strength to provide that pollination.

And there are so many bees required to pollinate almonds at such an early time of year that all these replacement methods to replace dead colonies due to CCD really have to be put on steroids early in the season at some expense to get the pollinating bees out to the almond orchards.

So there was a spike and there continues to be high fees paid for early season rental bees for pollination.