Over the past 15 years, numerous colonies of bees have disappeared throughout the world. In the US, the latest estimates suggest that a total of 1.5 million (out of 2.4 million total beehives) have disappeared across 27 states! But what's causing such a wipe out of the bee population? This documentary explores the dangers that bees face throughout the world, including investigating the prevalence of pesticides, viruses, and treatment from human bee keepers.

We know that bees make delicious honey, but these insects are responsible for much more. Bees pollinate 80% of our most flavorful food, like nuts, berries, fruits and vegetables. Albert Einstein once said, "If bees were to disappear from the globe, mankind would only have four years left to live." This chilling quote gives context to just how much bees do for humans. Without bees to pollinate, we wouldn't have the abundance of delicious fruits and veggies that we do now. Insect pollinators are what helped form the Earth we know today, so without them, life would change dramatically.

How Can You Help Bees?

In order to help bees' survival, we asked local bee expert, Charlie Koenen, to suggest a few helpful things that we can do in our everyday lives. He says that we should support locally grown products, consume less pre-packaged foods and avoid the products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Bees need diversity, so planting a garden with variety is helpful. Charlie has been working with bees for almost a decade. He created Beepods, an alternative beehive design, as a better way to raise bees in the city and to promote education and advocacy. To see Charlie in action, come to one of the upcoming Beesentations at our Riverside Park branch and learn to help spread the buzz about bees!

Did You Know...?

Honeybees only live for 30 days and for most of it they remain inside their hives working. Only the last ten days of their lives do they fly out to explore.

Honeybees are considered the third most important working animal following cattle and pigs.

Although the queen bee is the mother of all the bees in the colony, the colony can decide at anytime that they want a new queen. Then the worker bees 'make' themselves a new one from a larva that actually should have been a worker bee. The former queen bee has to swarm out with the old bees and surrender everything to the young bees.

Ticket Giveaway

To celebrate our partnership with the MKE Film Festival, we are giving four chances to win free tickets to the "More Than Honey" documentary. Stay tuned to our Facebook and Twitter pages this week – we'll be asking bee-related questions that you can answer for your chance to win!

Come see this documentary and watch for your chance to win tickets. You could BEE a winner!

Ticket Winners!

Congratulations to the people below.

Facebook:
Question: What's your favorite dish that has honey as an ingredient?
Winning answer submitted by Nicolette "Hubby making as I type... roasted winter squash, potato, onion and garlic sprinkled with cardamom, ancho pepper powder topped with just the right amount of honey."

Twitter:
Question: What's your favorite bee pollinated fruit/nut? 
Winning answer:

@urbanecology The Bing Cherry!!!

— Kelly Torres (@MiniTorr59) September 24, 2013