Over the last two decades, the number of honey bee colonies performing pollination services for the California almond industry has grown steadily and now equals a substantial share of all colonies in the U.S. Most U.S. beekeeping operations have not expanded their colony numbers at the current levels of almond pollination fees. Thus, as almond acreage has increased, the marginal supplier of colonies has moved further away from California, increasing interstate shipments. We provide a conceptual representation of the supply and demand of U.S. colonies for almond pollination, and utilize the relatively inelastic demand for colonies to explore spatial elasticities of supply. We analyze temporal and spatial characteristics of the supply of colonies for almond pollination using colony shipment data from 2007 through 2018 provided by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. We use a geographically weighted regression to calculate supply elasticities for each state during this time period by combining the shipment data with prices from the California State Beekeeper’s Association pollination fee survey. Florida and Texas, where beekeepers have hesitated to participate in almond pollination due to relatively high transportation costs and the potential for local honey production at the time of almond bloom, have some of the highest price elasticities of supply. This suggests that beekeepers in areas with low transportation and/or opportunity costs have supplied all available colonies, and increases in almond pollination fees have had little effect. We estimate that Florida, Georgia and Texas had the largest number of colonies which did not participate in almond pollination in 2017, so further increases in supply are likely to come from these states.

中文翻译：

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蜜蜂大迁徙：蜂蜜蜂群运往加利福尼亚的杏仁授粉服务供应分析

在过去的二十年里，为加州杏仁产业提供授粉服务的蜜蜂群的数量稳步增长，现在占美国所有蜂群的相当大的份额 大多数美国养蜂业并没有以目前的水平扩大其蜂群数量杏仁授粉费。因此，随着杏仁种植面积的增加，殖民地的边际供应商已经远离加利福尼亚，增加了州际运输。我们提供了美国殖民地杏仁授粉供需的概念表示，并利用殖民地相对缺乏弹性的需求来探索供应的空间弹性。我们使用加州食品和农业部提供的 2007 年至 2018 年的菌落运输数据分析杏仁授粉菌落供应的时空特征。我们使用地理加权回归，通过将装运数据与加利福尼亚州养蜂人协会授粉费调查的价格相结合，计算该时间段内每个州的供应弹性。佛罗里达州和德克萨斯州的养蜂人由于运输成本相对较高以及杏仁开花时当地蜂蜜生产的潜力而对参与杏仁授粉犹豫不决，它们的供应价格弹性最高。这表明运输和/或机会成本低的地区的养蜂人已经提供了所有可用的蜂群，杏仁授粉费的增加几乎没有影响。我们估计佛罗里达州、乔治亚州和德克萨斯州在 2017 年没有参与杏仁授粉的殖民地数量最多，因此这些州的供应量可能会进一步增加。