Almond Day

What the day is

Almond Day is observed on February 16, which lands squarely in the California almond bloom, and the bloom is the interesting part.

Origin and background

California grows the overwhelming majority of the world's almonds, and almond trees need insect pollination to set a crop. The orchards cover an area far too large to be served by resident bees, and they flower for only a few weeks. The solution is migratory beekeeping on an extraordinary scale: hives are loaded onto lorries from across the United States and driven to California every February, with a large share of all commercial honeybee colonies in the country converging on one crop at one time. It is the biggest managed pollination event anywhere.

The concentration creates its own problems. Bees from everywhere meet in one place, which is efficient for parasites and disease, and the hives then disperse nationwide. Beekeepers have reported heavy winter losses for years, and while the causes are multiple, including mites, pesticides and habitat loss, the almond migration is part of the picture.

Water is the other constraint that reaches the news. Almonds are a thirsty permanent crop grown in a region with recurring drought, and the frequently quoted figure of roughly a gallon of water per almond is broadly defensible. The important qualifier, usually missing, is that almost all agriculture is water-intensive and the comparison needs to be like for like, including against the dairy and meat production almond milk often replaces. Permanence is the genuine issue: an orchard cannot be fallowed in a dry year the way an annual crop can, because the trees die.

Botanically the almond is the seed of a drupe closely related to the peach, and the bitter variety differs by a single genetic switch that governs cyanide production.

How to take part

• Toast them before use. It changes almonds more than almost any other nut.
• Look up footage of the February bloom and the hive deliveries.
• Plant bee-friendly flowering plants, which help resident pollinators year-round.
• Compare water figures fairly, against what the product actually replaces.
• Buy whole almonds rather than ground, which goes stale quickly.