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Rain is pelting the cherry orchards at Wunsch Farms on the Old Mission Peninsula.
Michal Peterson is wearing a full suit of rain gear. On the back of a flatbed truck are bee hives, stacked two or three high and dripping wet in the downpour. Peterson uses a Hummerbee forklift — "pretty much a forklift on steroids" — to offload them and drop them off around the rows of budding cherry trees.
He hands me a veil so I don't get stung.
Peterson works for Hilbert's Honey, Co., distributing beehives on orchards across northern Michigan, work he's been doing for 18 years.
"The wild honeybees aren't really around much. You got some butterflies, the monarchs and the bumble bees, but it's just another extra pollination to insure the farmer," he said.
Pollination is an essential part of many farming operations. That’s because pollinators — from bees to bugs to birds — are crucial for plant growth and reproduction.
Cherry trees, for example, need pollination in order to develop: More pollination means more fruit.
And the honeybees Peterson is setting up in northern Michigan are actually from Florida.
Commercial honeybees are considered livestock by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and shipping colonies to different crops around the country is a common practice. For instance, hundreds of thousands of colonies were sent to California's almond orchards in 2017.
But the process comes with complications and concerns.
European honeybees are not native to North America, and can disrupt ecosystems and out-compete native species for resources. Non-native bees face a number of threats as well: pesticides, diseases and parasites, and weather. Some years have seen high mortality rates, including this year, when some commercial operations reported high losses.
Peterson said they coordinate with those running the farm to reduce their bees' exposure to pesticides.
"He tells me when he's done spraying, and I can put the bees in," said Peterson. "Right now, they're probably going to spray after it stops raining, for fungicide or whatever. That don't really hurt the bees. It's the poisons that they put out."
Tens of thousands of bees teem inside one of the hives. Hilbert's hives usually have between 30,000 and 100,000 bees. They generally try to place the hives in the orchards when it's cool out — early morning or late evening — so the bees are less active. On a chilly, rainy day that's less of a concern.
The cherry trees aren't yet in bloom.
"By next week, you'll start seeing them kind of popcorn out of their shell and have white buds coming out," Peterson said. "So this is about the right time, as you can see, the rain don't stop me. [The bees] have to go in a certain time so they can get acclimated to their surroundings."
When Peterson began, he was in between jobs, and knew he wanted to work outside. His brother-in-law, a fifth generation beekeeper, reached out to ask him for help.
"I learned from the best, I feel," he said.
Peterson clearly loves his job. "The view is amazing," he said, though we couldn't see much in the downpour.
"While I'm putting in bees, it's really beautiful out here," he said. "I always get excited when I have to put bees in the cherries."
Hilbert's Honey is based in Traverse City and LaBelle, Florida, and Peterson is trying to get back down to Florida to make a second trip — his second this season.
He and his family rear queen bees in Florida and help pollinate watermelon crops there as well.
"I have a list of pollinations to do, and I'm almost done with this one," he said. "We do pollination up [US-31] and all the way up north of Northport. We try to stay local, try to help the local farmers. We also do almond pollination in the wintertime in California," he said.
"The bees travel more than we do."
