Article about toxic pollen
Greg V
Betsy True
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Greg V
Bees are disappearing; does anyone care?
- By MARK COWLING Staff Writer
- Oct 7, 2025 Updated Oct 23, 2025
FLORENCE — When Allen Clark was a young beekeeper 50 years ago, there were more than 100,000 hives in Pinal County.
Since then, the numbers here and elsewhere have dwindled from habitat loss, pesticides, drought and other climate changes.
Today, there are probably fewer than 4,000 hives left in Pinal County. About 3,000 of those are Clark’s. The public is interested in helping the bees, but Clark said it’s an uphill battle.
“I’ve had 20 people come in the store since we’ve opened it and want me to give a class on keeping bees. I tell them it sounds lovely, but you people cannot keep a beehive alive in Cactus Forest all year.”
Clark Bees opened a honey store on Adamsville Road just north of the highway late last year. But their main business is pollinating crops in Arizona, California and New Mexico. Bees are a critical part of the food supply including fruits, vegetables, nuts and coffee. Without bees, the world would have much less of these foods.
Bees have suffered in the Sonoran Desert’s long-running drought. Mesquite trees and catclaw bushes are among bees’ natural food sources. With falling water tables, “how much pollen and nectar are these plants producing when they’re dying of thirst themselves?” Clark asked.
Pinal County has certainly seen many agricultural acres lost to housing development, and some of the new residents aren’t interested in living harmoniously with bees. Neither are a lot of the people who continue to practice agriculture, Clark said.
“When you let the crop dusters and the cotton growers run things, and they don’t need the bees, they create an imbalance in the circle of agriculture. … That gap is 66% of the U.S. food supply,” Clark said. “That’s 94% of all the bees in this county destroyed in order to protect cotton.”
Local ordinances restricting bees include a lot of farm acreage that needs them. “You have created ordinances to stop the next generation of beekeepers. … You have taken away people’s rights to live. You don’t realize the consequences.” According to a sign in Clark’s store, 80% of food is pollinated by managed honeybees.
But housing developers get priority over the cost of food in this state, Clark said.
“We used to grow lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower right here in Chandler, Queen Creek and Tempe. You used to get fresh produce — cut today, in your store tomorrow. Now I guarantee you that 99% of all the produce you grow is over a week old before it gets to the store.”
In the agricultural land that remains, bees face hazards from genetically modified crops and insecticides, Clark said. A beekeeper near the city of Maricopa lost thousands of bees, 25% of his operation, after some feed corn for livestock was sprayed. “Do you think anybody cares?” Clark asked.
Until people go hungry there won’t be any changes made at any level, and “all this is a waste of conversation and time.”
Cotton pollen was clean until about 25 years ago, Clark said, but all cotton grown today is genetically modified. At one time bees had clean cotton pollen in the hive to live on during the winter. “Now we don’t. And what little pollen we have, I believe, is toxic. … I try to stay as far away from cotton as I can possibly get.
“... The reason I say the pollen is dirty now, is because when the bees start eating it in December, that’s when they start dying. When there’s no other pollen available to the bees to dilute it, when they get down to eating the pollen they’ve retained over the summer … they die. As long as the bees have other pollen to eat daily, they’re fine.
“As soon as they dig into their stash (of cotton pollen) … all of a sudden they start dying.”
Bees in the Midwest are dying off with the rise of genetically modified corn and soybeans. “The graph is almost identical. … I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that’s just coincidental, and I don’t understand progress.
“... We have a vicious agricultural circle here, and we have no politicians truly standing up for the people themselves to protect the food supply,” Clark said. While environmentalists tout clean water and air, “have you ever heard one say clean food?”
Bees are dying while the need for food continues to grow. “The beekeepers that are pollinating food crops, I think — with our population as high as it is — need to be watched over and protected,” Clark said.
Beekeepers like him pollinate multiple crops in the same year. “If there’s an insecticide creating a problem for them, it’s got to be controlled or banned. If there are growers who are collecting government money but aren’t supporting the bees, then these growers need to lose their government money. … You can’t continue to get a free ride while you are destroying other people.
“You get rid of the farms, you get rid of the bees; when you get rid of the farms you get rid of the food supply. I guess you don’t need me. Don’t worry about what I’m pollinating or not pollinating, ain’t no food here to pollinate.”
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Koelsch
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Greg V
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Greg V
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