US (CA): Bee population decline could reduce 2013 fruit crop
Farmers are being forced to consider alternative types of pollination increasingly as the bee population has continued to fall since 2006. They are only now starting to make progress in this.
"It's tenuous now; we've got fewer bees," Bob Curtis of the Almond Board of California said.
"If something goes wrong with the weather, some growers could be in trouble," he said.
The trouble could well be crop shortages and inflated prices, not to mention reduced income for farm workers.
California's almond board has already spent more than $1.4 million in research to try and establish the root of the situation.
Source: allvoices.com
