I'm sure smarter people than me have thought about this. Trucking bees back and forth from Georgia every year just doesn't sound like a very sustainable system to me though. Interesting how bees used in California that don't produce a honey crop lower the value of honey all over the country.
it's very sustainable...as long as gas/diesel is artificially cheap.
also, consider that in many of the larger operations, the bees are built up on hfcs....which they store in the comb. now, who wants to truck hfcs to california, when lighter hives mean more $$$ per truck load? so the hfcs is extracted (or boxes simply removed), bees transported, and here comes the tanker truck with fresh hfcs.
are we to assume that the extracted hfcs is not sold on the market as "honey"?
deknow