Bees Dying at an Alarming Rate

You may have heard the alarming news - the bee population is at a rapid decline, and this spells trouble for everyone. Suddenly, or so it seems, in recent years beekeepers have been reporting millions of bee deaths per month for seemingly completely unexplainable reasons. We now know that this mass bee extinction is due mainly to the use of pesticides, but also because of invasive parasites, a decline in the quality of the bee’s diets, and yes, climate change.

How does this affect humans? Simply put, the loss of bees means a loss of our food supply. There is an extensive list of foods that depend on the pollination process to survive: practically any fruit or vegetable you can imagine, nuts, coffee, beans, cocoa, cotton, vanilla, and many grains, just to name a few.

The good news is that in summer 2015 President Obama signed a memorandum establishing a pollinator strategy and the Agriculture Department announced $8 million in incentives to farmers who establish new habitats for honeybees in a few states. But this has proven to not be enough as the death toll for bees continues to climb.

There are, however, ways in which you can help too: don’t use pesticides, and buy organic and local so you don’t promote the use of pesticides, you can donate to the pollinator partnership, put out a small basin of water for thirsty bees, and try to buy raw & local honey (or don’t buy honey at all). In addition to all of this, one of the best things you can do is to provide a “honey bee haven” or pollinator garden in your own backyard, providing bees with pesticide free food, shelter, and water simply by planting the right kinds of plants (bright white, yellow, and blue flowers are all safe bets) in your garden or in flower pots outside. You can visit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pollinators page for more in depth instructions on how to create your own pollinator garden.

This rapid loss of bees is not just a bee crisis, it's an everyone crisis. Do your part to help save the bees!