PERColator Blog

Q&A with beekeeper Todd Myers on National Honey Bee Day.

On August 22nd, beekeepers observe National Honey Bee Day to promote local beekeeping and encourage “support of beekeepers in their own communities.”

For centuries, even in the face of disease, parasites, and colony collapse, beekeepers have maintained healthy bee hives. And while most “beekeeping is local in nature,” this spring, the White House Pollinator Health Task Force unveiled a national strategy to reduce honeybee losses and restore pollinator health. Given the ability of beekeepers and their hives to rebound, and with U.S. honeybee colonies now at a 20-year high, do bees need a national pollination strategy?

To find out what practitioners think about a national honeybee policy, we talked to our friend Todd Myers, a beekeeper with hives in the foothills of the Cascade mountains. Todd, also an environmental policy analyst, has written about bees on the Washington Policy Center blog and for Business Pulse magazine.

Q:  How did you get your start as a beekeeper? 

A:  My sister has been a beekeeper for about a decade and I got tired of hearing how interesting honeybees are, so I decided to give it a try. I am just a hobbyist beekeeper and I have four hives on a small farm near my house.

Additionally, having worked in environmental policy for more than 15 years, I see beekeeping as a great way to connect theoretical policy issues with the real-world challenges of natural resource management.

Q:  What do you enjoy most about beekeeping?

A:  Bees are just incredible. As much as you learn, there is always more to learn. There are always things you see that make you think and differing opinions that challenge your understanding. Everyone starts off asking me about honey, but when I tell them how bees can do calculus or how they create an immune system for the hive, people are amazed and interested in the complexity of honeybees. The more I learn, the more I work with them, the more fun it is.

Q:  What is one component of the beekeeping business that most people are surprised to learn?

A:  Most people don’t realize how significant the almond crop in California is to commercial beekeepers. A huge number of hives —accounting for more than 31 billion honeybees —travel to California early in the year. People would also be surprised to know how many beehives are near them, even in cities. Many people keep backyard beehives, even in areas people would think are simply too urban to support them.  

Q:  What role do bees play in the ecosystem?

A:  Honeybees play an important role, but it is often exaggerated. First, honeybees are not native to North America. Second, many plants are wind pollinated. Third, there are many other pollinating insects. One often hears that without honeybees we would all die. That simply isn’t true. Furthermore, thanks to the resilience of beekeepers and their hives, there isn’t a risk that we are going to end up without honeybees.

None of this, however, means they aren’t important. Bees are critical for the almond industry and many other farmers who find that putting honeybees on their farm significantly increases crop yields. Bees are valuable pollinators. Their role need not be exaggerated to recognize how wonderful and important they are.

Q:  What is Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and why does it cause such concern?

A:  Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), first identified in the U.S in 2006, is hard to pin down. It is most commonly associated with a situation where bees suddenly disappear from a hive, leaving it for no apparent reason. This, however, occurs in a tiny percentage of cases where a hive dies. According to Bee Informed, a national hive survey conducted annually by the USDA, CCD is responsible for less than ten percent of total hive loss. The vast majority of hive deaths are associated with other issues, such as starvation, harsh winters, and parasites like the varroa mite. For beekeepers, there are many other areas of greater concern. In the media and for politicians, however, it’s easier to focus blame on one thing, so CCD has been conflated with concerns about increased hive mortality.

Q:  Rising concern for bees and CCD has led to the creation of a Pollinator Task Force to reduce honeybee losses nationwide.  What do you expect to result from the White House plan?

A:  Not much. Real solutions will come beekeeper by beekeeper based on the problems they face.  The White House plan does some good things, like increasing forage for bees. But, it wasn’t a sudden drop in forage land that caused hive mortality to increase around 2006. So, this is a helpful step, but it doesn’t address the real cause, which the EPA, beekeepers, and others recognize as a confluence of factors, including the varroa mite and a range of other threats to healthy hives. The critical factor in reducing hive mortality will be the actions of beekeepers caring for their own hives.

That personal, local approach to hive mortality is important for a variety of reasons. For example, the USDA Bee Informed survey finds significant differences in the causes of hive mortality between commercial beekeepers and sideline/hobbyist beekeepers. This may be due to lack of skill among hobbyist beekeepers, who report a higher level of “don’t know” when asked why their hives died. It could also be that commercial hives face very different stresses – like being transported long distances and exposed to different crops – than the hives of hobbyists and sideline beekeepers. Ultimately, adaptation to these types of local circumstances will dictate the response and solution to the increase in hive mortality.

Q: What type of government policy could help beekeepers?

A: There is no silver bullet here because there is no single or uniform cause of honeybee loss.

First, there is some indication that corn ethanol subsidies have reduced forage for honeybees, increasing hive mortality in the Midwest. Randy Oliver, who runs the Scientific Beekeeping blog, noted that, “bee pasture in the Midwest is disappearing under the plow, largely due to our environmentally-irresponsible taxpayer-subsidized policies that encourage farmers to plant every square foot of land into corn.”

Second, the Administration correctly notes that we need more forage for bees, but what that means varies. In some cases it means adding cover crops for bees in fields that would sit fallow. In other cases, it means leaving existing plants for the bees. The Washington State Legislature, for example, passed legislation designed to increase bee forage in a way that doesn’t destroy the best forage plants – invasive species like Himalayan Blackberry and Japanese Knotweed.

Lack of beekeeping knowledge can also be a threat to honeybee populations. Traditionally, state beekeepers played an important role in improving the overall quality of beekeeping, teaching the many hobbyist and sideline beekeepers how to avoid and prevent the spread of disease. Given the financial situation, many states have cut or left empty the position of state beekeeper, and it is unlikely that these positions will be replaced or adequately funded. Beekeeping organizations and universities should work together to replace this service to improve the overall quality of beekeeping and share the latest science.

Ultimately, however, increasing the honeybee population is in the hands of those who know and care about them – individual beekeepers.

Q:  Is there any sense of interdependence among beekeepers? 

A:  Beekeepers support each other by sharing information and promoting research on what is impacting bees. There is certainly competition for work in price and other aspects of beekeeping, but beekeepers have been very willing to participate in national surveys like Bee Informed and other efforts to understand the risks to honeybees.

^{USGS image by David Pratt.}

As California’s drought enters its fourth year, more than 70 percent of the state is under extreme drought conditions. Just this week, the California Water Commission announced new lawn restrictions for development projects, limiting grass to 25 percent of the landscape. But such efforts amount to merely a drop in what is already a very dry bucket.

Like California, Australia recently experienced a prolonged period of drought. In response, Australia implemented several reforms to promote water markets that allowed water trading to occur across competing uses. But did it work? And if so, could California and other western states do something similar?

Jeff Bennett is an economist at Australian National University and a 2015 PERC Lone Mountain Fellow. He is also the author of the recent report from the Reason Foundation, How to Solve California’s Water Crisis: Lessons from Australia’s Water Reforms, examining Australia’s experience with water markets.

To learn more, we asked Jeff about water market reforms in the “Land Down Under” and what lessons we can learn to address California’s drought.

Q: With California and much of the western United States reeling from drought, some have pointed to Australia as a model for how to deal with water scarcity. What exactly has Australia done?

A: Australia’s water reforms have centered on the Murray Darling Basin, an area of more than 400,000 square miles in the southeast of the continent. Water in the Basin is used for irrigation and domestic use, but it also supports a wide range of wetland, river, and floodplain ecosystems.

Prior to the 1990s, water uses were heavily regulated by government agencies. The result was an over allocation of water for irrigation as politicians sought political favor from the farm sector and an inflexibility in the ways that water was used. Now, property rights to water have been clearly defined and an active market has emerged in which irrigators trade water rights.

The price of water is determined by the interaction of supply and demand. During a drought, as water becomes increasingly scarce, the price of water increases. In response, irrigators ration their use and invest more in water saving technologies. As the price rises to reflect increasing scarcity, less valuable uses of water are given up. For example, irrigated annual crops are not planted, and only the most valuable uses of water are continued. The process ensures that water is used as efficiently as possible.

At the same time, the over-allocation issue was addressed by establishing and funding an agency to buy back water rights from irrigators. That water is now used to provide “environmental flows” that sustain river ecosystems.

Q: Why did Australia move toward this market allocation of water?

A: The over allocation of the waters of the Murray Darling Basin to irrigation became apparent in the 1980s and 1990s. The lack of water began to cause the loss of wetland areas and forests of River Red Gums along the rivers. Increasing levels of soil salinity caused by excessive irrigation were also of concern. Hence, both farming and environmental groups began voicing their concerns about the management of the water resource.

However, it was the “Millennium Drought” of the 1990s and 2000s that brought the situation to a head. The unprecedented conditions brought about by the drought, on top of the stress already caused by over allocation, triggered widespread recognition that urgent action was required to ensure the survival of both the environment of the Basin and its farming communities.

Q: What have been the results of Australia’s reforms? Has it worked?

A: The market for water rights provides remarkable flexibility in the management of water for irrigated agriculture. It allows farmers to cope more effectively with both seasonal and annual variability in water availability.

The structure of irrigated agriculture is evolving in response to the reforms. Lower-valued uses of water such as irrigated pastures and grains have given way to higher-valued crops such as wine grapes and almonds.

So while the overall amount of water used in irrigated agriculture has declined as a result of the reforms, the value of production has remained relatively stable. In this regard, the reforms worked. The environment of the Basin has begun a ”repair” phase, and the early evidence suggests that wetlands and floodplain ecosystems have recovered—although this is harder to judge given that the reforms have so far been implemented across a sequence of relatively wet years.

Q: What were the responses to Australia’s reforms?

A: The crisis situation brought about by the Millennium Drought created a political context in which change was feasible. However, there were winners and losers from the reform process. Farmers who were freed to either buy or sell water did so because they were made better off by their actions. Buyers have built their enterprises to become more flexible and more profitable despite the higher prices of water. Sellers have either left the agricultural sector, downsized their irrigation operations, become more efficient in their use of water, or converted to dryland farming.

Many Australian farmers required that the reform package be “sweetened” by subsidizing some water conservation investments to ensure that production levels could be maintained. However, these sweeteners were not enough to placate some interest groups in the Basin. Protests against reform were mounted in towns across the Basin, citing concerns that some communities would be threatened by reduced irrigation activity on the surrounding farmlands.

It is true that population has declined in some towns. But these losses have not deviated from long-term trends of depopulation in small communities. Some regions have actually grown with the relocation of water rights and the consolidation of rural populations into larger towns.

Those concerned with the condition of the Basin’s environment have been overwhelmingly supportive of the reforms but continue to advocate for more government spending on the purchase of water rights from irrigators for environmental flows.

Q: What about Australia’s cities? How have they dealt with drought?

A: The water reforms implemented in the Murray Darling Basin have not been mirrored in the allocation of water in Australia’s major urban centers. Faced with supply shortages during the Millennium Drought, water supply authorities in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne resorted to use restrictions and supply supplementation investments.

Restrictions included time-of-day as well as use-type rationing. For example, watering of gardens using fixed hoses was initially restricted to night-time hours and then banned altogether. Major investments were made in desalination plants, and households were subsidized to install rainwater tanks and water-saving plumbing.

With the Millennium Drought now over and water supplies up again, these desalination plants are now unproductive, yet they still place tremendous financial burdens on their cities’ residents because of the need to run them in maintenance mode to preserve their reverse osmosis filters.

The costs of these investments have now been shown to far exceed the benefits they produced. Their impacts could have been achieved at far lower cost through the effective use of price as a means of rationing available supplies among competing uses.

Q: In terms of urban water use, what could be done to promote exchange between higher-value users and lower-value users?

A: The advantages of water trading in the Murray Darling Basin were not experienced by the people of Sydney, Melbourne, and other major urban centers.

People with high values from water use such as gardeners with prize-winning roses were treated just the same as those whose water use was inconsequential. Price was not allowed to act as a signal of water scarcity, and people were not able to react to that signal as they saw fit. Instead, bureaucratic processes dictated what could and couldn’t be done. Rose gardeners, therefore, had to carry buckets of water to their beloved plants, contributing to the emergence of a condition that became known amongst chiropractors as “bucket back.”

This situation could be addressed by allowing urban residents to react to changes in water prices. If the price of water was determined by the level of water in storage, those with high-valued uses of water could simply decide to pay the price while water savings would come from those with low values for water.

Reform would free up trade in water between urban and agricultural users. Given that the value for potable water in urban areas is generally higher than that generated by irrigated cropping, there are potential gains from trade between urban and rural users.

Q: Is Australia’s experience a model for California and other western states dealing with drought?

A: In Australia’s experience, water trading has proven to be a highly effective mechanism for dealing with drought. California and other western states would do well by taking on board the experience “Down Under” as a guide to what could be achieved and how.

The removal of bureaucratic allocation processes and the establishment of water markets in both irrigation and urban contexts would ensure the flexibility needed in drought conditions. Safeguarding the environment through the purchase of water rights from irrigators is also key strategy. It also ensures that irrigators are compensated for the loss of their rights to water.

However, even these environmental allocations should not be removed from the water market. Ongoing trades between consumptive water users and those responsible for environmental flows can be advantageous for all parties.

To read more, see Jeff Bennett’s report “How to Solve California’s Water Crisis: Lessons from Australia’s Water Reforms” at the Reason Foundation.

With summer fast approaching and the snow melting from all but the highest peaks around Bozeman, now is a good time to update our supporters on PERC’s recent accomplishments and upcoming plans. Our staff and fellows are preparing for another productive summer of workshops, fellowships, and educational programs, one that will build on the success and good fortune we have enjoyed this year.

From June through August, the PERC offices will be abuzz with visiting scholars, researchers, and students. The Lone Mountain Forum, June 11–13, will kick off the workshop season. This year’s topic is “Frontiers of Free Market Environmentalism,” and we have commissioned essays from scholars in economics, law, political science, and ecology to frame a discussion of PERC’s future research agenda.

A few days after the Forum, we will host our Liberty Fund Colloquium for Undergraduate and Graduate Students, June 15–20. This event exposes students to the principles of free market environmentalism, encouraging them to examine their beliefs about the sources and solutions of environmental conflict. 

Later in the summer, we will host the newly revamped Enviropreneur Institute, July 7–12, and host two Searle Freedom Trust workshops titled “Wildlife Conservation, Trade, and Property Rights,” July 26–29, and “Market Adaptation to Climate Change,” August 5–7. We are also launching a new Impact Fellowship program with six resident scholars conducting policy-relevant research at the nexus of markets, property rights, and the environment. And, of course, we will host daily seminars by visiting scholars and graduate fellows from around the country.

There will be no shortage of exciting people and programs at PERC this summer! Our objective is to strengthen the intellectual case for free market environmentalism and to connect those ideas to policy makers and environmental entrepreneurs who can apply them.

One recent and powerful example of PERC’s policy relevant research is Holly Fretwell and Shawn Regan’s Divided Lands report which examines the economic implication of transferring federal lands to state management. Rather than taking a hard line position on the transfer issue, the authors simply let the data speak—and the data spoke volumes! The four western states included in the report returned an average of $14.51 for every dollar spent on state trust land management, while the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management generate a mere 73 cents on the dollar.

What a difference the right institutions make!

PERC’s timely and objective analysis of this controversial issue captured the attention of media outlets and key policymakers, allowing PERC’s ideas to take flight. A few highlights include:

• U.S. Representative Rob Bishop referencing Divided Lands during a March 5^th oversight hearing on the Department of the Interior’s budget;
• The Wall Street Journal publishing Shawn Regan’s op-ed, “The U.S. Department of Land-Hogging,” on April 3^rd;
• Shawn Regan and I testifying before the House Subcommittee on Federal Lands and Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, respectively, on the $20 billion in deferred maintenance on federal lands.

Of course, the Divided Lands report is just one example. Research by Terry Anderson, PERC’s William A. Dunn Distinguished Senior Fellow, is likewise shaping the policy debate on hydraulic fracturing, African wildlife, and New Zealand fisheries.

With these recent successes, and in the fervor and excitement of preparing for another PERC summer, it is easy to forget that none of our efforts to advance free market environmentalism would be possible without our supporters. We hope that you will visit us and see for yourself the return on your investment.

Last year, America’s national parks received more visits than ever before, according to new data released by the National Park Service. A record-setting 292.8 million people visited national parks in 2014, breaking the earlier park attendance record set back in 1987.

But a lot has changed since 1987. Population has increased considerably, and so have the number of parks. So how do the new visitation numbers compare once we consider these other factors?

The chart above shows national park visitation as a share of the overall U.S. population. Since 1987, U.S. population has increased by approximately 75 million people. Measured on a per capita basis, national park visitation is about 20 percent less than it was in 1987. As a share of the population, park visitation has gradually declined almost ever since.

This decline is even more pronounced once we consider the growth of the National Park System. Since 1980, more than 70 national park units have been added to the National Park System. Yet these additional parks do not seem to be attracting more overall visits per capita.

As the National Park Service prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2016, there is much emphasis being placed on its ability to attract people to parks – especially millennials. Park visitors can play an important role in funding parks in their next century and helping to address the agency’s $12 billion maintenance backlog. But these data suggest that the National Park Service still has much work to do.

Meanwhile, this week President Obama announced the creation of three new national park units using his executive authority under the Antiquities Act.