‘Bee’ the Solution

Honeybees are the only insect to produce food eaten by humans. To make just one pound of honey, worker bees have to fly 55,000 miles and tap two million flowers. Each honeybee’s wings beat about 200 times per second, creating their infamous buzzing.

Throughout history, countless cultures and civilizations have venerated the bee. Aegean cultures believed bees were a bridge from the natural world to the underworld. Records from 2,500 B.C. show honeybees carved into ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Honey was revered as a medicine and, when excavating pharaoh’s tombs, archeologists have uncovered jars of honey, buried alongside these leaders.

Sadly, today honeybees have lost their place of prominence in our society. They have been drawn into industrial agriculture and, each year, hundreds of thousands of honeybee hives are shipped from Coast to Coast, providing pollination for everything from almonds to zucchini. This system focuses on the economic value of the bees and disregards the life of the animal. We’re not taking care of the bees—they’ve become a commodity, much like CAFO beef or GMO corn.

For the past 70 years, the number of honeybee colonies in the U.S. has steadily declined. In the 1940s, there were 7.5 million colonies nationwide. Today, there are only 2.5 million. That’s 250 billion fewer honeybees. Clearly, if honeybees are any indication of the health of the environment, then they are sounding a warning to us all.

At Rodale Institute, we believe the backyard beekeeper is the key to honeybee health. We need more hobby beekeepers.

I’ve been a beekeeper for nearly twenty years. And part of my goal is to share my passion for the bees with others. Over the years, I’ve introduced a number of colleagues and friends to beekeeping: Stefano from Azure Bees; Adam from Whole Foods Market; and, most recently, Michael from Rodale Institute. Each has described beekeeping as a meditative, spiritual experience that has taught them patience, trust and increased their belief in the value of hard work. Working with the bees has changed their lives for the better.

When I welcome new employees to the Rodale Institute, I share the history of our organization, our core values and mission. To impress upon them the importance of our work, I relate our planet to a bee’s hive. We are the stewards of this planet, much as the bees are the stewards of their own colony.

After a bee stings, she dies. She only gets one chance to make this sacrifice for the hive.

We humans are lucky. We get many chances to protect and preserve our hive, our colony—this planet we share with so many amazing creatures.