The plight of American honeybees drew a journalist away from his usual beat covering energy.
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Last August, as I stood in a field in North Dakota, hundreds of thousands of bees surrounded me. The chorus of their collective hum was soothing, almost mesmerizing.
It was an unlikely assignment for me, a reporter who covers energy for the Business desk of The New York Times.
The idea came to me months earlier, as I was returning home from a reporting trip for an article about a coal-fired power plant that a utility was converting into a solar farm. On my flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, I sat next to Jenna Budke, the daughter of migratory beekeepers. We struck up a conversation, and she told me about the challenges facing the honeybee industry, including climate change.
I knew I wanted to get in a beekeeper’s suit and learn more about honeybees.
After discussing the idea with my editor, I reached out to Ms. Budke. I told her The Times wanted to follow her parents along their journey to capture what migratory beekeeping looked like. She connected me with her parents, Nancy and Keith, the owners of Budke Bees.
I also began contacting researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Cornell University, as well as government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
I learned that bees were disappearing in large numbers. Today, honeybees are facing the worst colony collapse in U.S. history. And as much as 70 percent of colonies could be lost this year.