Welcome to Plan Bee Now! We are on a Mission to Save Bees that guarantees future food security and ecosystem services. When I say ‘bee’ I mean more than just honey bees because British Columbia has 450 species of native bees in its pollination web and each of those species has a place that must be protected and cared for. For 10,000’s of years berries and nuts were pollinated by our native bees. Most bees do not sting.
When keystone species of ecosystems, like bee pollinators, especially native pollinators, are disappearing something is very wrong that needs to be remedied immediately. The same old world that we have been used to while growing up and think that we can take for granted is falling apart, ecologically. Pollination ecologists world-wide agree that we can expect significant impacts to our food security in decades to come if we do nothing. Pollination deficit of major food crops is happening e.g. almonds. Native plant species are beginning to disappear. There are reports of apple crops being pollinated by hand in China because the bees were killed with pesticides.
One hundred food crops depends on adequate bee pollination of our 100 food crops and approx.. 2400 native plants that grow in BC. These are the plants run the fine tuning of the ecological life support machine we need to stay alive or guarantee a quality life style.
Bee conservation is essential to preserve or capacity to produce food and guarantee our ‘ecosystem services which keep us alive on this planet or in other words, the health promoting living space for our kids and grandchildren.” Saving bees where we live is now not just a nice thing to do, it is an absolutely essential focus and activity for all levels of our communities. We at a point now where bees cannot save themselves without help. Just leaving bee pollinator conservation to just conservation groups is not going to do the job
Plan Bee Now! Our Mission
The Plan Bee Now mission is to PUT BACK the huge area of ‘flowers’ that we have taken from our bee pollinators due to past and present bee unaware land development. ‘Bee pasture’ is the sum and total of all plants in an area i.e. square yards, meters, acres, hectares which provide nectar and pollen to bees from the spring to the late fall of each growing season. It is the foundation of food security and ecosystem service health.
Only massive organized energy directed towards helping bees will restore our lost capacity for bee pollination for food security and environmental health.[1] Plan Bee Now! is set to fill this void and initiate one of the biggest coordinated, integrated conservation efforts we have seen. We can no longer afford the status quo It involves all of us but especially gardeners, food production farmers and industry groups, land managers and administrators and land planners. All levels of society need training about the requirements and status of our honey bees and native pollinators and a thorough understanding of the life line to bees and food security is paramount.
Fortunately, our experience with the public’s interest and concern with this bee issue is that they are very eager to help but do not know specifically what to do and do not have the plants and especially the know how to use them in their gardens, farms and industrial sites in a bee-friendly manner
[1] California’s almond crop is now just on the brink of pollination deficit which is having not enough pollination to set an economical crop. Each year almond growers struggle to get enough honey bee hives into their almonds for pollination. Almonds need honey bees for pollination.
Hi Ted.
Really like the comic, though not all of it is up yet. And hope you get your blog going soon. We had 3 hives this year. Not hugely productive, but very interesting. Harvested some honey, very excited to do so.
Observed many varieties of native bees in the gardens all summer, thanks to your tutelage. Haven’t found ground bees yet, but will let you know when we do!
Hope you are doing well.
Louise