They sit amongst beautiful flowers and trees, and have a lake to drink from. It's the most bee friendly space I've seen, and I thought we were pretty great to them in our yard. If they weren't spoiled before, they should definitely feel the love now.
The study of bees is an incredible journey. It's so wonderful to be part of something so massively larger than us and to be doing our part to help save the bee populations, and as a by product saving our food source.
It seems like pretty old news that there is a problem with bees vanishing due to pesticides that screw up their gps to make their way back to the hive after foraging, and brings about illnesses for them, as any poisons would for an individual. I think it's also pretty well known by now that about 1/3 of what we eat is a direct result of these pollinators, so if they were to disappear completely, our cycle of food and diets would immensely be changed. In fact, I'll take it a step further and say that if you follow Michael Pollan's guide in his book, "In Defense of Food," where he highly encourages most of one's diet to be fruits and veggies, I'd estimate more than 1/3 of your diet is impressed upon directly due to these little pollinators.
But I'm always in awe when I encounter knowledge of more experienced beeks (as we often call beekeepers in this little community). I had no idea how democratic the hive can be, but learned recently that when a hive is about to swarm, or move locations, they send out a few bees to check on options. Those bees then come back to the hive and share their findings, and then the bees VOTE on where they would like to move. Yes, someone has studied these little bees and their waggle dance to learn down the minute where they are in their voting process and can tell you by their body language and little dances how many minutes until the hive will be relocating and in which direction they will fly off to get there. It's incredible.
We have to save the bees!
Even if you can't have a hive, you can do research on planting some of the bees favorite foraging flowers. Just having a bit of water out and some pollen friendly flowers is a small way you can help this cause. And please, don't use pesticides.
P.S. Borage is a bee favorite.
Below is a photo of our hive in their new home.
The string of bees to the left is them festooning, which means they are in the process of making comb by stringing wax together.
Our friend Larry helped, and is learning beekeeping by helping observe our hive.
The thing about bees, is making sure they have plenty to forage, and this time of year there are so many beautiful blooms in bounty that I made some flower arrangements for our host family since they are moving into their new house soon. All of these beautiful flowers were hand picked from their garden. Look at those dahlias!
