alph Poe was having coffee at the Model T in Winnemucca, Nev., back in 1981 when a truckload of bees happened down the highway.

Poe had always been interested in bees. So when the trucker stopped for coffee and offered to sell Poe two starter hives, the aspiring keeper was beside himself.

"I just picked them up and hauled them over," Poe said of the bees. "But one got under the corner of my glasses and couldn't get out, so she stung me."

Stings and all, Poe's hobby tending bees had officially begun. That summer, he developed 15 hives. The honey was delicious and the locals were interested -- honey being akin to an inoculation against regional allergies.

In the years that have followed that fateful day in Winnemucca, Poe and his bee-keeping skills have come a long way. Last year, he was called out numerous times by the county extension office to remove a hive from a tree, a swarm from a fence, and a colony from a home.

That last call involved a man who had finished his basement, only to discover that he had enclosed a hive of bees within the walls. The buzz was easily heard -- nearly 10,000 bees doing their work.

"I set a receiving hive outside the window," Poe said. "We got some to go in there, including the queen. They were huddled all around her, about the size of a baseball."

Living off York Road, not far from the trailhead to Refrigerator Canyon, or the shores of Holter Lake, Poe's place is well suited for his bee boxes. He buys most of his supplies from Western Bee, a Polson-based company that has been in business for 43 years.

Dick Molenda, CEO of Western Bee, sells bees every May and produces the wooden ware that supports the honey industry. The materials are sold across the U.S., as well as Canada, Mexico and the Middle East, where honey, given its biblical ties, is the most popular natural sweetener.

Bee day, as Molenda calls it, involves offering three pounds of freshly shipped "shooks," or bees shaken into a wire box and placed with a newly mated queen. The bees pick up the queen's scent and the hive begins to gel.

"Putting two queens in the hive is like putting two women in the kitchen who don't like each other," Molenda said. "She is the star of that hive. She is the organizer. A hive does get disorganized without a queen."

Last year with bees disappearing due to colony collapse disorder, the insects were big in the news. This year, however, the price of pollination may dominate bee-oriented headlines. The almond industry, the largest and most profitable in California agriculture, depends on bees for pollination. So every spring, nearly 60 percent of the commercially kept honeybees in the U.S. are trucked to the Golden State to do their busy work.

The main effect of the bee shortage, the Los Angeles Times recently reported, has been the skyrocketing prices for bee-oriented services. The price has gotten so high that some have taken to honeybee rustling, an old crime in the new West.

Five or six years ago, farmers could rent hives for $30 or $40 each. That's still the price for many crops, including cherries, Molenda said. But today, for almonds, increased competition has left pollinators paying up to $150 per hive. And because it takes an average of two hives to pollinate one acre of almond trees, the cost can add up.

"It went up to $50, and everyone was smiling," Molenda said. "Then it got up to $140, even $150 this last year. If you're a bee keeper who lives in Wolf Point and has 5,000 colonies, he can take them down to California and get $150 a colony. He's looking at making $750,000."

Having so many bees in one place, brought in from so many places, can take a toll on the bees. Molenda suspects the stress of shipping the bees via truck across the country and the mingling of so many bees in one place has contributed to CCD.

"Bees that stay in Montana with a hobbyist who doesn't ship them out seems to have fewer problems," Molenda said. "Pesticides may also play a part. We just about spray everything anymore. There's always residue left over. I'm sure it's one of the factors in this mystic disease."

Poe has his own suspicions.

"One of the theories I read about is cell phones," he said. "They think the electronics disrupt the communication of the bees."

Poe talks bees and science like Jane Goodall talks primates. Spend a few minutes with him and you're likely to learn something new about bees. They are, it turns out, quite complicated.

The queen begins laying her eggs after the winter equinox -- as many as 2,000 eggs a day, Poe explained. The bees seal off the hive and keep warm eating honey. By the first of May, the hive gets active.

"The majority of the workers are all females, and their main project is to take care of the eggs and the queen, keep her fed, and keep her happy," Poe said. "The few males, or drones, are mainly for mating."

The fate of a drone is a cruel one. When the queen takes over a hive, she only needs to mate with a few drones. Those unneeded drones, now considered useless bees by the rest of the hive, are locked out by female worker bees and ultimately starved.

"Bees are an interesting family," Poe said.

Reporter Martin Kidston: 447-4086 or mkidston@helenair.com