In 2014, when Jennie Durant bought permission from her North Berkeley landlord to boost a bee colony in a sideyard, she hoped to study extra concerning the bugs she was learning in her Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley in environmental science, coverage and administration. Despite the fact that the 20,000 bees within the colony would die from the varroa mite — a scourge many yard beekeepers in Berkeley refuse to deal with with a pesticide — the expertise proved fruitful.

“A part of my motivation was to have the vocabulary and a few background in beekeeping,” Durant mentioned. “I knew I used to be going to be speaking to industrial beekeepers.”

Her interviews with industrial beekeepers turned integral to her analysis for her first e-book, “Bitter Honey: Large Ag’s Menace to Bees and the Combat to Save Them,” an investigation into how industrial farming poses a rising risk to America’s bees.

California’s almond crop within the Central Valley was the logical place to start out.