Celebrating the pollinators on World Bee Day, May 20
Per EarthDay.org, “these fuzzy pollinators need our help. Threats like colony collapse disorder, habitat loss, and climate change are huge issues to bee survival.” Visit https://www.earthday.org/bee-facts/ to learn more about how you can support the bees and “bee a hero”.
Did you know that….
🐝 three out of four crops across the globe producing fruits, or seeds for use as human food depend, at least in part, on bees and other pollinators. (Source UN.org World Bee Day https://www.un.org/en/observances/bee-day
🐝 the honey bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by humans.
🐝 the average forager (the ones you see in flowers) makes about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
🐝 90% of wild plants and 75% of leading global crops depend on pollination. (Source EarthDay.org https://www.earthday.org/bee-facts/
Tell it to the Bees 🐝
Bees, and honey, have also been associated with healing (medicinal and spiritual) and releasing.
In some European traditions, bees are a link, a conduit, between our physical world and the spirit world. In the practice of “telling the bees”, important events — birth, death, marriage, departures, sorrows etc — would be shared with the bees. And there was a penalty if one did not share such news… the bees might flee their hive, die, or stop producing honey. Right relationship with the bees was (and is) quite important!
Image: iPhone pic of bee foraging at Riley Park, Vancouver