5 Things You Can Do for the Honeybees

I have to apologize for the infrequency of my posting as of late, I’ve been rather busy with school and writing. Although, thats no excuse at all.

Well, I’ve been doing pretty much the same things with my bees, feeding them the 2:1 sugar syrup again this past weekend. I will also probably be feeding them again this coming weekend.

For those of you who have been following my posts thus far have really only seen how I work on small projects with my hive. By now your interest might have been piqued by both the photos and my explanation of the process a first year beekeeper has to go through in his first autumn harvest, and you might be asking yourself or wondering how you could get involved or help the honeybees out in some way.

Well there are varying degrees of commitment that in the end will be helping the girls out.

Come on, how can you say "no" to this cute face?!?

Photo credit: from Flickr user biggernoise
So I’ve decided to compile a short list of things you can do to help the honeybee make a comeback, each with a different level of commitment to choose from.

• Plant a honeybee garden in your back yard

As simplistic as it sounds it works. It helps bring back native honeybee population and watching the gentle little creatures fly all around is a great way to spend a lazy spring or summer afternoon. A great site with and extensive list of plants that bring honeybees different attributes is located here…

• Support your local beekeepers

Buying locally harvest honey doesn’t just help the beekeeper, in the long run it helps you. This is because if you live in the area around the beekeeper, the honey that is harvested has natural abilities to actually reduce your chances of getting allergic reactions to the areas certain plants and irritants. Pretty cool. Commercially blended honey doesn’t do that. (I know it’s a Wikipedia source but it makes a point)

• Join a beekeeping club/association, even if you don’t keep bees

Just because you don’t keep bees in your area doesn’t mean that you aren’t wanted at the meetings and gatherings. Most beekeeping associations want others to become excited about beekeeping and will most definitely become excited if a young person starts to show interest in their work. With our generation on the verge of taking the reigns from the waning generation, we hold a certain degree of power in getting issues heard and solved by using the power of the Internet. Help the older beekeepers in the beekeeping association out by giving a strong voice to the plight of CCD.Being around expert and very experienced beekeepers will probably get you excited and itching to know even more about these amazing little creatures, it might even help you make the jump to the final two things you can do to help out the honeybees…

• Start your very own Observation Hive

An observation hive is a small have with glass panels on the sides that allows one to look in and observe the colony without smoking and tearing out chunks of their house!

You might have seen a rather large and very permanent observation hive at The Franklin Institute

It’s an amazing sight to see all the workings of a hive in natural harmony. It isn’t as large a commitment as a standard 10 frame hive. The only thing is, since it isn’t protected by the traditional large hive walls in normal hives, and observation hive lives indoors with you! Scary sounding at first but the bees enter and exit through a 1 – 1 1/4 inch tube leading from the hive to outside your house. The gist is, an observation hive is a hive that is indoors and is connected to the outside so bees can come and go as they please, it’s a great educational tool, it’s a little bit different from running a 10 frame hive, and it gives you a really interesting conversational piece next time friends come over….Here are some sweet pictures of a massive observation hive the guys at Honey Run Apiaries made.

The final and probably obvious next step in helping the honeybees out is…

• Become a backyard beekeeper

It’s really not as hard as it sounds. In fact if you start looking in to it now you’ll be well on your way to becoming a backyard beekeeper when the spring time season starts to come around. Keeping bees safe and providing them with a place to live, work, and raise brood is the number one thing we can do to help them make a come back. Without them our crops and farms wouldn’t be as nearly as bountiful as they are now. As a backyard beekeeper you’ll also reap the rewards of fresh organic honey, wax harvests, and other products that you can choose to use for yourself, or sell to make profit. This little niche hobby has global impact on crops and food supply.

Which ever you choose to do or not do, the honeybee needs our help and every bit counts.

So get out there and help the girls out