> Maybe the almond growers should underplant with a range of wild flowers
to give long-term forage to native pollinators as well as their own
honeybees.

There are a few factors working against this:

1.  There is no summer rain in Calif.  The flowers would need to be
irrigated, which is very costly.
2.   Any additional plants compete with the trees for water and nutrients.
3.  All vegetation must be mowed low for harvest of the nuts, which are
swept from the ground.

That said, Project Apis m is pushing growers to do just such planting, and
is holding a demonstration field day.  We hope to use the recent studies
about the benefit of native pollinators to encourage such planting.

However, even if such planting were done universally, it still wouldn't
supply enough forage to sustain the number of colonies needed per acre to
pollinate the intense bloom.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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