Last winter, commercial beekeepers lost more than 60% of their colonies – their worst losses on record. We tend to blame bee losses on separate, singular threats: pests, pesticides, habitat loss or extreme weather. But we’ve been thinking about bee losses wrong.

The real culprit is our industrial food system.

Managed honeybees are in effect gig workers, the tiniest hired laborers in agriculture. They contribute more than $15bn to the US food system, and – along with native bees and other pollinators – help pollinate more than 130 fruits, nuts, and vegetables in the United States. To accomplish this feat each year, bees are trucked cross-country from one crop to the next, constantly fed supplements, bred for productivity, exposed to pesticides, and pushed to pollinate on a schedule. This kind of management is grueling for beekeepers – and as we mark National Pollinator Week, it’s pushing bees to the brink.

California’s annual almond bloom offers a prime example. Each February, beekeepers truck more than 2 million bee colonies to the state, more than 95% of the country’s commercial colonies, to pollinate 1.4m acres of blooming almonds. It’s the largest, most concentrated pollination event in the world – what’s been referred to as the Super Bowl of beekeeping.

But almond pollination poses great risks for beekeepers and their bees. As bees........

© The Guardian