In 2014, when Jennie Durant got permission from her North Berkeley landlord to raise a bee colony in a sideyard, she was hoping to learn more about the insects she was studying in her Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley in environmental science, policy and management. Even though the 20,000 bees in the colony would die from the varroa mite — a scourge many backyard beekeepers in Berkeley refuse to treat with a pesticide — the experience proved fruitful.
“Part of my motivation was to have the vocabulary and some background in beekeeping,” Durant said. “I knew I was going to be talking to commercial beekeepers.”
Her interviews with commercial beekeepers became integral to her research for her first book, “Bitter Honey: Big Ag’s Threat to Bees and the Fight to Save Them,” an investigation into how industrial farming poses a growing threat to America’s bees.
California’s almond crop in the Central Valley was the logical place to start.
