http://www.fresnobee.com/business/story/1803937.html

Deep-seeded dispute on citrus pollination grows
New state rules fail to quiet dispute between growers, beekeepers.

Posted at 09:52 AM on Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010
By E.J. Schultz / Bee Capitol Bureau

SACRAMENTO -- A battle between the Valley's bee and citrus industries will rage on after the state finalized regulations this past week that mandarin growers say won't keep bees from causing seeds in seedless varieties.

With the state Department of Food and Agriculture taking the lead, the two sides for two years have been seeking a compromise that would keep bees from dropping pollen in seedless groves. The citrus industry says the invasion causes mandarins to bear seeds. As a result, the fruit drops in value, they say.

Beekeepers -- whose bees seek citrus blossoms for nourishment -- blame growers for planting seedless varieties too close to seeded fruit.

The regulations rely on county agricultural commissioners to serve as mediators. But citrus leaders say the rules lack teeth.

"From our perspective, the bee industry was in no mood to compromise and from our perspective, the Department of Agriculture has hampered our industry's effort to satisfy consumer demand of seedless mandarins," said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual trade group.


Citrus tree netting
FRESNO BEE FILE

Netting covered a row of citrus trees last year near Polk and Whites Bridge avenues to protect them from bees, which feed on citrus blooms to give them needed carbohydrates, but could cause seedless varieties of the fruit to develop seeds.

Beekeepers are a lot happier.

"I don't think it was terribly unfavorable to anybody," said Roger Everett, president of the California State Beekeepers Association. The regulations allow "for growers and beekeepers to have conversations about how best to be good neighbors."

The dispute has its roots in the 1998 citrus freeze, which hurt production in the Valley's citrus belt. Overseas growers filled the void with seedless varieties that were an instant hit at the supermarket, Nelsen said. To compete, California growers began planting more seedless mandarins.

But growers began noticing that their fruit had seeds -- and they blamed the bees, even threatening lawsuits. Bees do heavy work pollinating almonds in February -- a valuable chore that growers could not live without.

Later in the year, the bees feed on citrus blooms, which give them needed carbohydrates. But the bees do little for mandarins except to drop seed-causing pollen, the citrus industry says. For protection, some growers cover their crops with nets.

Legislation passed in 2007 created a working group to seek solutions. Nelsen said citrus growers proposed buffer zones requiring keepers to put colonies two miles away from groves.

But that didn't fly with beekeepers.

"We already have [a] limited number of places where we [can] place bees," Everett said. He noted that the industry has its own problems, as bees continue to die in big numbers, partly because of a disease called "colony collapse disorder."

As negotiations dragged on, the author of the bill, Assembly Member Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, complained in a 2008 letter to the agriculture department that the working group was just "rehashing the problem" and spending "little time focused on solutions."

The final regulations -- issued almost a year after the original deadline of Feb. 1, 2009 -- allow a grower to request that a beekeeper move his colonies to an alternative location. If an agreement can't be reached, either party can ask the county agricultural commissioner to intercede. The commissioner must make a recommendation among a variety of options, none of which is legally binding.

The rules cover Fresno, Madera, Tulare and Kern counties.

In an e-mail statement Friday, the department said it "implemented a regulation consistent with the scope of authority provided by the Legislature. The regulations incorporate the recommendations of a working group including both the citrus and bee-keeping industries."

The ultimate solution could lie in a new variety of mandarin called "tango," which is designed to be immune from cross-contamination. Nelsen said the first batch is just starting to hit the market.

"There is some optimism," Nelsen said, "but we don't know how seedless it's going to be yet."

The reporter can be reached at eschultz@fresno bee.com or (916) 326-5541.

sounds like a big mess. I hope some type of resolution can be made.

It was Spanish seedless Clementines that first came to the USA when California had their freeze. In Spain where many Clementine mandarins are grown, it is against the law to place bee hives within 2 miles of any mandarin grove. Therefore, Spanish Clementines are seedless. Many people claim that Spain's Clementines are the best tasting among the various countries that export the fruit into the USA. I tend to agree. - Millet (1,083-)

Many of the newly producing Citrus groves in Madera
county are nestled in between or are located near older
and more established Fruit and Nut tree orchards as
well as some even older still Grape vineyards. Some
growers in other counties purposely planted new Citrus
acreage near already producing Nut orchards which
at the time the bee activity was wanted by many of
the Citrus growers. With the advent in popularity of
certain Mandarins that are better saleable to fresh
market end consumers as being seedless, those
Citrus growers that at first wanted bee pollination,
no longer have any interest in the apiculture
community that still serve the nearby Fruit, Nut
and Grape growers. If we were to go back in and
make a claim on who was there first to help settle
the ongoing, bitter dispute, it was the Grape, Fruit
and Nut growers that should win out in most cases.

Yes, some of the now producing Mandarin groves
in Madera county, one in particular, along Avenue
9 near older Almond and Pistachio orchards are
using the netting as seen in the photo.

Jim

http://thepacker.com/m/story.asp?sect=news&page=Top%20Stories%20from%20ThePacker.com&contentId=1000916

Mandarin growers still seething over California bee regulations

By Don Schrack

VISALIA, Calif. — After two years of meetings, negotiations, occasional harsh words, proposed compromises and evaluated comments, the California Department of Food and Agriculture has formalized regulations regarding bees and citrus.

Neither side, grower-shippers nor beekeepers, is ecstatic.

“It’s a paper decision that does not bring a resolution to the problem,” said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual, Exeter.

At the core of the dispute is cross pollination between seeded and seedless varieties. Seedless mandarins tend to grow seeds when bees visit both varieties.

The regulations require beekeepers in four major citrus growing counties, Fresno, Kern, Madera and Tulare, to register the locations of hives annually by March 1, about two months before the citrus bloom. Mandarin growers who are concerned that hives are too close to groves can ask beekeepers to relocate the hives.

If the two parties cannot reach a compromise, either side may ask the county agricultural commissioner to intervene, but the commissioner’s ultimate recommendation is not binding.

“To me, the state didn’t want any part of it,” said Woody DeHaven, owner of DeHaven Apiaries, Visalia, and a California beekeeper for three decades. “The only way they could figure out how to get out of it was to do little or nothing.”

The registration requirement, he said, is not new at DeHaven Apiaries and is in the best interests of the bee industry. Owners of registered hives are alerted in advance when nearby growers are about to apply chemicals. On those rare occasions when DeHaven concluded the spraying could endanger his bees, he has moved the hives temporarily.

“I’ve always registered,” DeHaven said. “All I did was just move up my registration date.”

Larger citrus growers use nets to keep bees out of their seedless groves. That might not be financially viable, however, for some growers.

“As a result, the small family farmer will have more seeds in the fruit, and that fruit is going to sell for a lower price than the seedless fruit,” Nelsen said.

The netting, which covers trees from the ground up, and the labor to put it in place costs about $800 per acre, if it lasts four seasons, according to grower-shippers. Beekeepers are not unsympathetic, but view the issue differently

“In any business, you buy insurance to protect yourself,” DeHaven said.

The genesis of the seedless citrus controversy was the 1998 California freeze. Offshore-grown mandarins filled the market gap left vacant by California’s freeze damaged navel oranges. The instant popularity of the fruit spurred California growers to plant more mandarin varieties.

Bearing acreage for those varieties was 8,600 acres in 1998, according to the Department of Food and Agriculture. By 2007, the last year for which statistics are available, the acreage had skyrocketed to 16,000 — and growing.

Another concern among citrus growers are out-of-state hives.

“We would have taken care of the California beekeeper, but it’s the additional 500,000 hives that come in here to pollinate that don’t leave,” Nelsen said.

DeHaven agreed that the out-of-state issue has caused troubles for his industry. The hives do not create the predicament, he said, but out-of-state beekeepers do.

“The biggest problem we have with out-of-staters is they come in and set down on property without permission,” DeHaven said.

Out-of-state bees are necessary to fill contracts with almond growers, because California does not have enough bees to pollinate the nut crop, he said. The problem comes after the February almond bloom. Because of cold weather in home states such as South Dakota and Montana, the beekeepers linger in California until May when the apple bloom begins in Washington, DeHaven said.

The bees also help with California’s late February-early March plum bloom, a commodity that DeHaven’s bees have pollinated for many years, he said. The pomegranate bloom follows plums. While the fruit does not require bees, they help pollinate the crop, DeHaven said.

In recent years, University of California researchers have released new seedless mandarin varieties that tend to be unaffected by cross pollination.

“As more of these unseeded varieties are developed, I think we’ll see an end to the controversy,” DeHaven said.