Why Bee Positive?
Why be positive about the environment when the problems are so big that many of us feel we can’t make much difference with our individual actions?
We could take inspiration from bees! A single honey bee can’t make much difference on her own. To make a pound of honey a colony of bees will visit approximately 2 million flowers and fly over 55,000 miles. A single honey bee will fly 375 miles in her lifetime but only collect enough nectar to create about 1/10th of a teaspoon of honey. Together, with each bee contributing, beehives thrive.
Imagine what would happen if humans followed the example of bees. If we all contributed our own small actions, our 1/10th of a teaspoon of honey to the environmental issues that we face.
There are seven and a half billion of us which is a major cause of the problem but it's also potentially the solution. Together we are the biggest task force this world has ever seen.
What would our world look like if we ALL started to take small steps towards a cleaner healthier future?
We can start right on our own doorsteps, in our schools and communities, in our gardens and public green spaces. Conservation isn’t something we can leave to specialists; following their guidance it’s something we can ALL take part in, wherever we live.
And why bee conservation in particular? Bees are a keynote species which means that many life forms depend on the existence of bees. As our number one pollinator bees are CRUCIAL to the survival of our natural ecosystems and support the life cycle of multiple species of plants and animals, including humans.
It is estimated that one in three mouthfuls of food that we eat is dependent on bees and pollination. If you are beginning your conservation journey bee conservation is a great place to start and will have a huge knock on effect on other species and encourage wildlife to thrive. Like us bees are struggling with viruses and climate change. Why bees are disappearing.
Planting seeds is easy, so is creating a bee hospital. What does a bee hospital look like? It looks like a sunflower! Sunflower pollen has medicinal effects for bees.
Bee inspired!
Private gardens in Britain cover an area bigger than all of the country’s nature reserves combined, estimated at over 10 million acres. Individual gardens may be small but they create important green links between urban nature reserves and the wider countryside, forming vital wildlife corridors.
The potential of the country’s millions of gardens to help counteract some of the habitat losses that we have experienced in the last 50 years is enormous.