Bees and humans are partners: we can’t survive without their pollinating skill; bees can’t survive without a clean world. Keep the partnership alive by donating to:

1. Bees For Development: combats poverty through beekeeping.  Teaches beekeeping skills in poor communities; providing income and boosting the environment. Their patron is Sting, naturally (Photo: Paolo Roversi). Informative website too: Bees For Development.

2. Oxfam: Plan B helps struggling women in Ethiopia take up beekeeping and earn a living.

3. Tear Fund: The Bees Knees fund helps a family start a beekeeping business with a beehive and training.

It’s the most important relationship on Earth. Everything you taste and smell in Nature depends on pollinators who carry the essence of life.

Pollination is ‘a love story that feeds the Earth.’ – Louie Schwartzberg.

For a flower to reproduce, its pollen (male) must get to an egg (female) in another flower – and bees do most of the moving. The result is a cornucopia of foods from cherries to cashews, and courgettes to coffee. Our relationship with the pollinators is equally important: it’s honey bee season now so give them fresh water, flowers, and spray-free gardens.  Watch a clip from Louie Schwatzberg’s dazzling new movie, Wings of Life.

Nature is what we see -
The Hill – the Afternoon -
Squirrel – Eclipse – the Bumble bee -
Nay – Nature is Heaven -
Nature is what we hear -
The Bobolink – the Sea -
Thunder – the Cricket -
Nay – Nature is Harmony -
Nature is what we know -
Yet have no art to say -
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.
– Emily Dickinson

The latest on the pesticide threat to bees (see Nicotine Bees) is a small victory: a garden supplier has removed the words ‘low toxic to beneficial insects’ from an advertisement for  Confidor. This pesticide is extremely toxic to the world’s most beneficial insect, the honey bee. These nicotine-based pesticides are banned in Europe because of links to bee deaths. They stay in the plant right through to flowering – so bees are poisoned by pollen, nectar, dust, and water. Latest research shows how the pesticides contribute to the bee crisis by exposing bees from multiple sources. Photo: Sarah Anderson.

5 Ways to Save the Bees:

1. Avoid chemicals such as Confidor,  Poncho, Advantage, Marathon, Merit and Admire (grotesque names).
2. Buy local honey.
3. Grow bee-friendly plants, such as lavender.
4. Let there be weeds; let the broccoli go to seed.
5. Put out clean water in a shallow dish.

ERMA  is the authority that manages the poisons sprayed on our food crops. ‘Manages’ is the weasel word – meaning ‘we tell you the risk, but the choice is yours’. A powerful chemical (clothianidin) that ERMA approves for NZ crops is banned in Europe, and even the US authority was recently warned – by its own scientists – that the chemical is ‘highly toxic to beneficial insects such as honey bees’. Problem is, it’s so persistent it remains in plants through to the pollen stage (especially corn), and in meat and milk.

When I asked ERMA if they would review the chemical in NZ they said they already ‘managed’ the use of it (they tend to be slow to ban poisons). In the end it’s up to us whether we accept pesticide residues in our food (yes, clothianidin is there). But while we have some choice to eat organic, honey bees don’t, and they are already in decline.

Full article: The authority that kicked the beehive (download – pdf)

Bee photo by Sarah Anderson who also writes a beautiful blog.