Bees do so much more than make that sweet goop that goes so well with tea and crumpets. They also pollinate apples, berries, melons and about a hundred other crops that make our meals healthier more delicious, and more colorful.
We owe a lot to our honey bees. In fact, they pollinate approximately $15 billion worth of produce in the country each year — or about a quarter of the food we consume.
But, as you might know, honey bee populations around the world are dipping at devastating rates. And if these worrying trends continue, this is what your grocery store would look like: Half-empty.
MORE: Can Spending Millions of Dollars on Flowers Help Save the Honeybee?
That’s why Whole Foods Market is trying to get us — and their youngest consumers — buzzed about bees in their Share the Buzz awareness campaign.
[ph]
The grocery chain also announced a new initiative, the Honey Bee Grant Program, to educate youngsters about the importance of the honey bee.
In a recent announcement, the Whole Kids Foundation said they will award approximately 50 hive grants to school gardens across the country in order to teach kids how to raise bees and tend hives. The added bonus? As kids learn how to take care of their fuzzy friends, they also learn lessons on pollination, agriculture, ecology, and nutrition.
ALSO: Meet the Scientists Who Are Tackling Our Disappearing Bee Problem
“You can’t learn about growing fruits and vegetables without learning about bees,” said Jeff Miller, a beekeeper and educator at the non-profit DC Honeybees in Washington, D.C., in the announcement. “Bees are as important to the process as sun and water.”
As the foundation notes, any parent who is worried about exposing their kids to stinging insects should note that bees are naturally docile and, that with proper supervision, kids and bees can peacefully coexist.
Saving the bees and educating children at the same time — sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?
DON’T MISS: Help Save the Bumblebees With Nothing but Your Smartphone
Tag: bee colony collapse
This City Has Taken a Very Important Step in Protecting the Honeybee
By now you probably know that honeybees aren’t just pesks that you should swat away. Besides making delicious honey, bees are responsible for pollinating a big portion of foods that we like to put in our mouths, from apples to zucchinis.
We’ve mentioned before that honeybees pollinate approximately $15 billion worth of produce in the country each year — or about a quarter of the food we consume. But to the horror of beekeepers from coast to coast, honeybees have been disappearing in startling rates. The long-suspected culprit? Scientists have linked bee colony collapse disorder to a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, a product that’s chemically similar to nicotine.
Now, in a first for the country, the city of Eugene, Oregon has taken a major step in protecting not just the honeybee but other insects as well, including bumblebees, butterflies and moths, after passing a resolution that bans products containing this highly suspected insect-killer on city properties such as parks and schools.
MORE: Help Save the Bumblebees With Nothing but Your Smartphone
You might think that farms and other rural areas are the only places experiencing bee die-off, but it’s definitely a problem in cities as well. According to TakePart, after trees at a Target in Wilsonville, Oregon were sprayed with neonicotinoid dinotefuran to control aphids, a heartbreaking 25,000 bees (later upped to 50,000) were found dead. Although this may be an isolated report, it seems like a good enough reason to take this specific pesticide away as far as possible.
Encouragingly, the Oregon city might not be the only bee-friendly community. Paul Towers of the Pesticide Action Network told TakePart that other cities like Minneapolis, Berkeley, El Cerrito and Santa Barbara might follow in Eugene’s footsteps. Now that’s bee-ing a part of change.
Can Spending Millions of Dollars on Flowers Help Save the Honeybee?
You’ve probably seen the headlines touting the demise of the honeybee. But if you love smothering an English muffin with honey each and every morning, don’t fret that you’re going to have to kiss that sweet, sticky goo goodbye.
That’s because Uncle Sam is about to spend millions on delicious, nectar-producing flowers to help save the dwindling honeybee population. The USDA recently announced that farmers in Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin will share about $3 million in federal money to reseed their pastures with plants such as alfalfa, clover, and other flowering crops that attract both bees and livestock, the Associated Press reports. Farmers can also use the funds to improve their facilities such as building fences to make sure farm animals don’t wear out the vegetation on their pastures.
Honeybees pollinate approximately $15 billion worth of produce in the country each year, or about a quarter of the food we consume. But to the horror of beekeepers and farmers from coast to coast, honeybees have been disappearing in startling rates.
MORE: Meet the Scientists Who Are Tackling Our Disappearing Bee Problem
But with this money, farmers can grow nutritious bee-friendly plants alongside their commodity crops such as soybeans, cotton and corn which aren’t as appetizing to bees and can contain toxic pesticides—a suggested culprit of Colony Collapse Disorder, which has been plaguing the honeybee population. As the USDA’s David Epstein told the AP, “You can think of it in terms of yourself. If you are studying for exams in college, and you’re not eating properly and you’re existing on coffee, then you make yourself more susceptible to disease and you get sick.”
Basically, the USDA is giving farmers money so they can plant a healthier variety of foods for honeybees to pollinate. “It’s a win for the livestock guys, and it’s a win for the managed honeybee population,” Jason Weller, chief of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, told AP. “And it’s a win then for orchardists and other specialty crop producers across the nation because then you’re going to have a healthier, more robust bee population that then goes out and helps pollinate important crops.”
Could there finally be hope for the honeybees?
Help Save the Bumblebees With Nothing but Your Smartphone
It’s a whole lot easier to get involved in the conservation of our precious bumblebees than you might think. The newly launched interactive site BumbleBeeWatch.org allows anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to report sightings of our fuzzy friends from coast to coast. Whether it’s due to pesticides, global warming or urbanization, bumblebee populations have mysteriously plummeted. And although they don’t produce harvestable honey, bumblebees play an important ecological role, pollinating plants that humans eat. Now with this site, experts can track different bumblebee species, locations and populations (check out this bumblebee map that’s starting to fill in). Sheila Colla, a partner in Bumble Bee Watch, told Nature World News, “By locating rare bumble bee populations and collecting information on their ecological requirements, citizen scientists can help conserve these important insects.” Now that’s something we can all buzz about.
MORE: Turning to Open Source for Sweet Solutions to Bee Colony Collapse
Turning to Open Source for Sweet Solutions to Bee Colony Collapse
The crisis of the declining bee population has been getting some extra attention, and along with the extra awareness has come some clever solutions. It’s an alarming problem, but Open Source Beehives (OSB) has created an opportunity for tech innovators worldwide to lend a hand. The project takes a scientific data-driven approach to finding out why the bees are dying out so quickly, distributing sensor kits to volunteers, and using the sensors on hives to monitor bees’ current environments. They’re sharing the kits for free, and the technical code is open and available online, inviting the public to collaborate on a solution to this global problem. By empowering professional beekeepers and amateur concerned citizens at the same time, OSB is the first organization of its type to look to the masses for a solution.