Why Bees?

• Our early ancestors nearly worshipped the honey bee and would carve bee drawings detailing the honey hunt into rock walls

• Honey is the sweetest natural substance nature has to offer (Halter)

• honey heads the list of medicines for Chinese medicine (A World Without Bees by Allison Benjamin)

• Bees are a keystone species, or a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend.

• Honey Bees are the most economically valuable pollinator at $15-$20  billion annually. Research has shown native bees to be nearly as valuable.

• What Honeybees give us each year, the numbers:

  • 2.65 billion pounds of honey

  • 44 million pounds of beeswax

  • cotton

  • Bee venom or aphis drugs more medicinal purposes

  • Of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the worlds food, 74% are pollinated by bees

  • It is estimated one in three bites of our food are pollinated by honey bees. 

    • However, this varies due to diets and the vertical nature of our food system