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In the past five years, almond milk consumption in the United States has exploded over 250 percent. The lower-calorie, vegan milk alternative is a staple in grocery stores and coffee shops across the country now, but its booming popularity comes at a heavy environmental cost. According to a new report from
the Guardian this week, the titanic and growing demands of the California almond industry are placing a huge strain on the hives of bees used to pollinate their orchards, wiping out billions of honeybees in a matter of months.
"My yard is currently filled with stacks of empty bee boxes that used to contain healthy hives," Dennis Arp, a commercial beekeeper, told the
Guardian. Like many of his peers, nearly half of Arp's income comes from renting out his hives to pollinate almonds. But now, he says, he loses 30 percent or more of his bees a year, a number that's on par for many beekeepers in the U.S. One survey of commercial beekeepers found that 50 billion honeybees were wiped out in just a few months during the winter of 2018-19.
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