Not Quite So Sweet: Hemp & the Honeybee

A funny thing happened in November 2006. David Hackenberg, a Pennsylvania beekeeper tending to his hives in Florida, went on a routine check. What he found was startling: After opening up his hives, he discovered that there were very few honeybees present, which was an abnormality. He checked around the hives, but couldn’t find any perished bees — another abnormality. Hackenberg’s discovery alerted beekeepers in the United States of a serious — and potentially catastrophic — problem that was later named colony collapse disorder (CCD). But the phenomenon wasn’t entirely new. It had happened sporadically throughout history, though in Europe in the mid-1990s it had started to occur with startling frequency. But somehow, news of what was happening in Europe had been largely ignored, until U.S. beekeepers like Hackenberg reported their colonies were collapsing too. Once the problem was on U.S. soil, it was finally considered a problem. Print and television media quickly picked up the story. Alarm bells rang. The American public soon found out that honeybees, apart from simply creating something delicious, are important. As in our entire food production system is dependent on them important. The American Beekeeping Federation estimates that honeybees contribute $20 billion to the value of U.S. agriculture annually through increased yields and superior-quality harvests. And if they did in fact disappear, we’d be, well, up a certain creek without a paddle. So, a decade later, everything’s okay, right? Well, the rapid decline of the honeybee has forced us to pay attention. Researchers and beekeepers are searching…

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