Honeybees are one of the most important pollinators on the planet. Their labor singularly accounts for up to one third of our nation’s annual food supply, contributing about $15 billion in added value to vegetable, fruit, fiber, and nut harvests. In Texas, about ninety crops—melons, cucumbers, apples, cotton, canola, citrus, among others—owe their well-being to the honeybee. For commercial beekeepers, who truck their colonies thousands of miles cross-country, it’s this pollination process, much more than honey harvesting, that constitutes their livelihood: A beekeeper can earn upward of $150 per hive for leaving his bees at a farm or orchard for six weeks to pollinate the crops.But recently our agriculture and apiary industries have been hit with a true crisis: The bees are leaving. Entire colonies…The post Flying Away appeared first on Texas Monthly.