AS LONG AS THERE HAS BEEN TECHNOLOGY, IT HAS BEEN APPLIED TO AGRIculture. Every major advance throughout history, from metallurgy to steam power to computers, has been used to make the natural processes of growth more productive and efficient. Just as hunting and gathering have given way to neat rows of crops and pens filled with cattle, another area of food production—vital but easily overlooked—has been systematized in much the same fashion: apiculture, or the raising of bees. And as technology has revolutionized the way crops and animals are raised, so too has it made an enormous difference in the practice of beekeeping.

Consider, for example, the influence of the automobile. Early each May more than 100 truckloads of honeybees roll up Interstate 95 from several Southern states, but mostly Florida, to Maine for the purpose of pollinating blueberries. Each of these trucks, which are as large as any on the road, is covered with heavy, coarse netting to confine the bees while allowing air to flow over the hives and help the bees maintain a temperature of about 95 degrees. Beneath the netting a typical truck carries 400 to 500 hives, or colonies, of bees. Each colony contains a queen, a thousand or so males (known as drones), and perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 underdeveloped female worker bees. It also holds about 20,000 young, collectively known as brood, in the form of eggs, larvae, and pupae.

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