Save the Bee's

There are a lot of awareness campaigns around just now about the state of our Bee's.  There are lots of articles indicating that the Bee's are dying out and that huge companies such as Bayer and Monsanto can be blamed for this situation due to their nasty chemicals and pesticides.  It is a massive problem and people need to know how they can help the cause.

Instead of increasing the awareness of the issue, I want to increase awareness of how people can help encourage Bee's into their gardens and make it known that each individual person can do their bit to help the cause. 

The Greenpeace website explains better than I do the problem:

The problem of bee decline

Since the late 1990s, beekeepers around the world have observed the mysterious and sudden disappearance of bees, and report unusually high rates of decline in honeybee colonies. Bees make more than honey - they are key to food production because they pollinate crops. Bumblebees, other wild bees, and insects like butterflies, wasps, and flies all provide valuable pollination services. A third of the food that we eat depends on pollinating insects: vegetables like zucchini, fruits like apricot, nuts like almonds, spices like coriander, edible oils like canola, and many more… In Europe alone, the growth of over 4,000 vegetables depends on the essential work of pollinators. But currently, more and more bees are dying. The bee decline affects mankind too. Our lives depend on theirs.

Industrial agriculture impacts on bees

A major threat to bees comes from the toxic chemical pesticides used in agriculture. Several pesticides are real bee-killers, especially the ones from the chemical group called the “neonicotinoids”. Neonicotinoids can cause acute and chronic poisoning with deadly consequences for individual bees and entire colonies.

This could occur in the fields when bees fly through clouds of pesticides or in their hives when they feed baby-bees with contaminated nectar and pollen.

In addition to bee-killing pesticides, bees are weakened by climate change, parasites and the increasingly monotonous landscapes created by intensive agriculture that lead to a loss of biodiversity, availability of food and undisturbed habitats for wild bees and other pollinators.


Help the Bee's!
  
Buy organic, local, seasonal food grown in ecological farms. 

Plant a garden with diverse, native vegetation that is free of chemical pesticides. You can grow bee-friendly flowers or make a small home for wild bees.

Note: These solutions can help the bees in the short-term. But remember that the only long-term solution to save the bees and agriculture is a full shift to modern ecological farming practices based on conserving and protecting biodiversity.