While researchers probe deeper into understanding CCD, or colony collapse disorder, and beekeepers work harder to improve bee health, ordinary citizens can help the honeybee too.
Go Retro — Become a Backyard Beekeeper
Over the years, our diets have increased the demand for a constant stream of all-season fruits and veggies. Such demand hasn’t bypassed the bees. It’s turned bee pollination into a year-round service and beekeeping into a commercial industry. Today, there are half as many beekeepers as there were two decades ago, and the remaining beekeepers are mostly large-scale pollination services with thousands of hives and millions of bees. But there was a time when beekeeping was much more of a hobby than a commercial industry. “Beekeeping is a graying hobby,” says Jeff Pettis of the Dept of Agriculture. Joining the ranks of backyard beekeepers can not only infuse the dying hobby with life, it can strengthen the bee gene pool by adding healthy local bees to the mix.
If you’re interested in becoming a backyard beekeeper, experts recommend starting with a local beekeepers’ association to learn about keeping bees alive and healthy. It’s important that bees are adapted to the local climate, so you’ll want to start with a local source for bees. Aside from contributing to the bee population, just two hives can pollinate an entire mid-sized residential garden. You might just find yourself with a lifelong hobby. For most people, beekeeping grows into a passion.
Get Closer to Nature
Backyard gardens can offer a welcome supply of nectar and pollen for honeybees. |
If you decide to pass putting on a beekeeper’s suit, merely keeping a backyard bee garden is another good deed you can do for the honeybees. With rapid urban development limiting their foraging habitat, backyard gardens can offer a welcome supply of nectar and pollen for honeybees.
Cultivating plants that will attract bees is the most important task of a bee gardener. Choose flowers that bloom successively over the spring, summer, and fall seasons such as coreopsis, Russian sage, or germander in order to provide pollen and nectar resources to the native bees of all seasons. If you’re not sure what to choose, you can always check with a local garden center for their advice on “bee-friendly” florals. To improve bee visitation, the garden should contain large patches of like flowers planted in close proximity to one another. Diversity is a key factor in keeping bee gardens buzzing. Researchers have found that more bees will be drawn to gardens with ten or more species of attractive plants.
As you diversify your garden, keep part of it wild because bees prefer that to a manicured space. Go for a “planted by nature” effect rather than a perfectly pruned garden. Remember: bees don’t discriminate between weeds and cultivated flowers, so let those dandelions grow.
And of course keep your bee garden free of pesticides — a danger in any garden. Some pesticides can kill the bee before it returns to the hive; other pesticides get carried back and can harm the rest of the hive.
If, after all of your hard work, you’re still not seeing bees in your garden, it’s not a wasted effort. Growing a pesticide-free garden is also good for you if you’re growing fruits and vegetables. Robert Mendela, President of the Backyard Beekeepers Association, says, “Even if there isn’t a hive of honeybees within a couple of miles of your garden, gardening brings the grower closer to nature and closer to realizing that what s/he grows is more nutritious and tasty than the ‘factory-ized,’ perfect, unblemished, and perhaps pesticide-covered” produce.
Even if you don’t have a green thumb, buying pesticide-free foods at the market also protects humans and bees from pesticide poisons.
Give the Bees a Voice
“Something the average person can do,” says Mendela, “is to write to their senators and representatives in congress on the federal level and to do the same on the state level to support funding of honeybee research. This support has fallen off over the years.”
The news focus on CCD makes it an ideal time to put pressure on politicians to reinstate laws that used to prevent importing bees into the country and transporting them across state borders.
Large or small, any effort you make to help bees or increase awareness is a step towards healthy bees, healthy crops, and, consequently, healthy humans.
Thank you for this incrediable video on the bees. I am a teacher who teaches ecology. We discuss the how an ecosystem must be balanced and how everything is interconnected. This really enlightened my students. They went from hating pesky bees to respecting their role in the ecosystem. They come to class now excited about spotting a honey bee!
Anybody who started hives in 2008 have updates?
I’m making sure I only use bee friendly plants in the garden and on my balcony. I am also going to suggest to local garden clubs the idea of planting a garden of only things that will attract bees
I watched this last night and observed how they investigated and sourced the problem to a disease. What struck me however was the immune systems of the bees being depleted. I know they have contracted a disease, but how did their immune systems become so weakened in the first place? My gut feeling is that bio-engineered seeds used in crops all over the world are missing an important element that supports bees nutritionally and probably us as well? I think more investigation needs to be done into researching the seeds being used for our food supply. I think we have missed something with our playing with mother nature, something we didn’t see when we took DNA from one source and mixed it with another. Was something left behind?
I recently attended a talk presented at the United Nations Association of Southern Arizona meeting where I heard this disconcerting news, that about 85% of us are using genetically modified foods and may not be aware of this. A study done on hamsters demonstrated that after being feed a hardy diet of genetically modified foods for 2 years, resulted with most of the 3rd generation offspring as being sterile; unable to reproduce. (Goto: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/genetically-modified-soy_b_544575.html for this finding.) So ask yourself: What might this do to Our 3rd generation of offspring? Only time will tell or are the bees already telling us something?
yo buddy… i just wanted to say that my msie is exploding when I click on the pics… are you using some java or something?
I have just finished watching the Silence of the Bees. I have witnessed bees wondering aimlessly around my home, dying by the hundreds around my son’s school and all over Southern California. I have heard of a problem with the bees for several years, but I want to speak about it in a way that I’m not sure will be accepted but I feel should be stated.
In the bible it talks about the end of the world as we know it. It speaks of signs such as famine, drought and earthquakes before this several year end of the world happens. We will not be able to stop the events from happening but we can be prepared by believing in Jesus before it happens. Famine is a result of the loss of the bees and if I may go so far as to point out that the video even speaks of making a “super bee” which made me think of the stinging creature spoken of in the book of Revelations. We all know that aggressive bees are dangerous to be near and they are stronger than our honeybees so using them to help solve the issue is interesting. By funding bee research to form this “super bee” we may actually fulfilling scripture by eventually creating the creature that will hurt unbelievers in the end. Strange thought I know, but Jesus uses our choices to accomplish His will no matter if they are good or bad choices. All I am saying is that the disappearance of the bees is an indicator, to me, that famine is coming and that in turn brings the book of Revelation closer to being fulfilled. “Bee” prepared.
I think you bible fanatics need a reality check! Because of all this insane obsession with the ancient wordings in this bronze book pyschologically we are trying to fulfill those prophecies because we want to believe SO bad that the book IS the word of God. I say PUT THE GOSH DARN BOOK DOWN and snap to reality and let’s go to war against the evils who are destroying our world! And I don’t care how much you want to believe the end is near, it gives us no right to allow it to actually happen! We don’t ALL want to get to the NEXT world, there are a good number of us who actually LIKE THIS world! We need to put an end to ignorant destructive bad guys who hate life, who hate us, and who hate this world! BAN PESTICIDES BEE-fore it’s too late!!!
ho
Folks, the plural of bee is bees, NOT bee’s. Make nouns–(NOT noun’s) – plural by adding the letter s, NOT apostrophhe s ( ’s ) . Chair/chairs. Dog/dogs. Catch my drift here?
Last summer I had a great observation of bees, there were thousands in my yard but why? I went on a two week vaca. and didn’t mow my lawn. This left a ton of tiny yellow and purple flowers that attracted a bee blanket. It was amazing, I never saw so many bees. I n
Didn’t mow a large area of my lawn the rest of the summer. What was different about my lawn… It sucks hardly any grass and I use no lawn treatments and I never will. P. S. My vegetable garden did great!
I have witnessed an effect while testing weather radar systems. We put the wave guide dishes on the loading dock to paint or broadcast the radar signals over a field. We did this for short periods and found the dishes covered with bees and house flies. It seemed strange that both insects were attracted. This was some years ago around 1984 prior to the more recent evacuations of hives. In recent years, NOAA has tested newer methods of weather detection that use more power and directed at lower altitudes. I hope this helps in the research. I am not trying to state a certainty or fact, only an idea.
Thank you PBS for informing us daily with information to help us learn and “bee” aware!! As studies have been done to find the cause of this horrific disappearance…how does GE plants or GMO play a part in the Honey Bees pollination? Has there been any investigations, reports, or TV programs to link the two? Thanks so much and our family will continue to support PBS and their efforts to keep us informed!
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Hello Greg and all readers, I just wanted to saytht the FED is clearly a self serving bank which only profits from the money which is created by the USA. If they design a policy that creates the need to create an endless supply of money the FED is locked in.
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I can understand wanting to kill these things if youve ever been stung. but its just a defence mechanism.- if someone came at you waving there arms around, wouldnt you punch them?
Surely pretty fascinating post. In all cases I will try what is written here to pursue. greeting
Good post Admin, worth a comment
I hope it’s not too late for us to do something about our honeybee friends. I see bees on the ground all the time and I pick them up. Sometimes they recover but many times they do not. I take them to the flowers for a last drink. It’s heart-breaking. Pesticides are a major culprit. We need to plant flowers and stop using chemicals… and buy organic food and clothing. I started a petition to reclassify honeybees as endangered. This could be an important step to ending CCD. To sign, just follow this link:
http://www.change.org/petitions/please-help-save-the-honeybees
Thank you so much!
~Denise B.
My spouse and I started beekeeping in 2010. We took beekeeping classes that consisted of about 6 classes over the span of 1 yr. We started with two hives in the spring of 2010, by spring of 2012 all of our bees had disappeared from both hives. The hives were full of honey, however, no bees. We destroyed (burned) the empty hives and started with two new hives/bees last spring (2012). We had a warm day last week (Jan. 2013) my husband has reported that one of the two hives has no bees and the hive is still full of honey…very frustrating, disappointing, and very concerned about the possiblity that bees will become extinct. I contacted the State of Iowa Apriary expert last spring to report our bee loss…my next step is to contact Senator & State Reps.