California almond farmers who depend on commercial bee hives to pollinate their lucrative crops would benefit from increased efforts to protect essential bee foraging territory in northern prairie states, according a University of California, Berkeley, researcher.
A new paper, published this week in the journal Land Use Policy, shows that a government program that pays farmers to let marginal farmland go fallow has protected a critical bee refuge that supports 40 percent of the country’s commercially managed honeybees.
