Bee Depletion Affects Ice Cream
Foods to Make Flavors To Be In Short Supply From Vanishing Hives
Feb 18, 2008
With food prices already high, it is discouraging to learn that ice cream prices may see an increase in price due to an unlikely source. Haagan-Dazs is reporting that the depletion of honeybee colonies in the U.S. may make for poor fruit, vegetable, and nut crops. These products are important when making the various ice cream flavors that Haagan-Dazs offers, and the bees are said to contribute up to one-third of the country’s food supply via pollination.
The company claims that honeybee pollination is responsible for 40 percent of its flavors, mostly fruit flavors that come from the Pacific Northwest, specifically California. Even with price increases, the Haagan-Dazs company is worried that they won’t be able to produce as many variations of their product. They currently have 60 flavors on shelves but may have to do away with some as a result of this problem.
To help, Haagan-Dazs is donating $250,000 to Pennsylvania State University and the University of California to research the cause of the decrease in honeybee population. The bees themselves are not necessarily dying off but vanishing completely, leaving behind empty hives, a phenomenon being called “colony collapse disorder.” Some bee keepers are reporting half of their supply gone, leading them to believe that several factors are related to the problem. Haagan-Dazs also plans to put out a new flavor called Vanilla Honey Bee to raise awareness about this problem. They realize that the bee problem will affect not only their company but the food industry in general.
Bees have been present on earth for 30 million years. In recent history, honeybees have unknowingly contributed up to $15 billion worth of seeds and crops each year from 130 different fruit, vegetable, nut, ornamental and fiber crops grown in the U.S. They also produce several hundred million dollars in products created from the hives themselves, such as honey, wax, and royal jelly. They carry pollen on their hind legs as they fly back to the hive they share with up to 50,000 other bees. They must collect nectar from approximately 2 million flowers in order to be able to make one pound of honey. This is almost as much honey as the average person consumes in one year. However, each bee only makes about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in their lives. This is why it is important to have thousands of bees working together in order to produce as much honey as they make. Now, food distributors are relying on a way to keep these tiny workers in business so that they may do the same.
