The Bee Project - Plant a Wild Seed Initiative

 

Educational Resources

Habitat Restoration Bee Facts
Wildflowers Healing
Plantings Inside The Hive
Be A Bee Useful Links

While there are hundreds of species of wild native bees in North America, we have come to depend on just one domesticated species to produce much of our food, the non-native European honeybee, raised by beekeepers.

Bees are the pollinator stars but ants, birds, beetles, bats, flies, wasps, butterflies, moths and other animals also pollinate plants and sustain our ecosystem. The problem is the estimated 4,500 species of pollinators are in steady decline. That's why, for many entomologists, the bee crisis is a wake-up call. It speaks to a larger conservation issue.

Biodiversity contributes to human health and well-being. There was a time, decades ago, when farmers didn't have to depend on beekeepers to bring in bees to pollinate the crops. Back then there were enough wild pollinators around to do the job for free. Since then, agriculture has grown into big business. Worldwide, mega-corporations turn to monoculture for harvest efficiency and use GMO seeds which are developed and often planted under the cloak of secrey. And our own urban footprint has done considerable damage to native habitats as we erect cities and infrastructures without as much as a second thought to the habitat which ultimately sustains us all.

The Secret Bond

Pollination is not just natural history. It is an essential ecological survival function. Without pollinators, the human race and all of earth's terrestrial ecosystems would not survive. Almost 80% 0f the 1,400 crop plants grown around the world that produce all of our food and plant-based industrial products require pollination by animals.

The secret bond in this partnership is that neither plant nor pollinator populations can exist in isolation - should one disappear, the other is one generation away from disaster.

 

 

 

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