The Culture of Beekeeping in North Dakota

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

There are a lot of bees in North Dakota in that month, in that period. Just something beautiful about that imagery of them just kind of hanging out there. And I wonder if there's some, if there must be a lot of beekeepers who hang out near there and there must be some culture of interaction between them that is undocumented perhaps. There's actually, there's a really good book, another one that I would, that's on my reading list, right, Hannah Nordhaus, the beekeepers lament. It's about the culture of beekeeping.

Wally Thurman of North Carolina State University and PERC talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the world of bees, beekeepers, and the market for pollination. Thurman describes how farmers hire beekeepers to pollinate their crops and how that market keeps improving crop yields and producing honey. Thurman then discusses how beekeepers have responded to Colony Collapse Disorder--a not fully understood phenomenon where colonies disband, dramatically reducing the number of bees. The discussion closes with the history of bee pollination as an example of a reciprocal externality and how Coase's insight helps understand how the pollination market works.