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• "Eastern North Dakota, they're just really lacking on forage," Woodworth said. "There's just so much corn and soybeans. Soybeans will produce, but it needs to be warm nights and hot days and they just haven't had that."
• The Dakotas honey slowdown comes on the heels of continuing bee losses from colony collapse disorder, a mysterious phenomenon that has caused as much as one-third of the nation's bees to just disappear each winter since 2006. A federal report blames a combination of intertwined factors that include a parasitic mite, multiple viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, genetics, habitat loss and pesticides.
• "Boy, it really hit hard this last winter," Adee said. "We lost 42 percent of the bees we ship to California, and that's about the national average. We can't sustain those losses."
• During a typical summer, bees will continue to carry pollen back to their hives until the early part of September, and producers will extract honey from frames through October.
• Adee said warmer temperatures this week could help the bees still in the fields pick up the pace, but beekeepers prefer temperatures in the 80s rather than the 90s or 70s.
• "We're all hoping for a good two weeks left of the summer to kind of bring things up a little a bit, and it could make a little difference," he said. "But it's getting late. The flowers are just about gone."
• As big as Adee's honey operation is, it's secondary to his pollination business
• At summer's end, the colonies will be shipped to California to pollinate almond crops and then head north to Washington to pollinate apples. They'll then head down south for bee breeding operations in Mississippi and Texas.
• "Those bees are little tourists, and they don't even get frequent flyer miles," Adee said.
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• SPEARFISH, S.D. (AP) -- A nonprofit group that supports the 117-year-old D.C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery in Spearfish hopes to head off what it says are plans to close the facility in less than two months.
• The Booth Society Inc. issued a statement this week saying the hatchery is one of several across the country targeted for closure due to federal budget cuts. The facility that has been a landmark in Spearfish since 1896 is due to close Oct. 1, according to the group. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not confirmed that, the Rapid City Journal reported.
• The hatchery still produces fish -- as many as 30,000 rainbow trout from the fa

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