WE LOVE OUR BEES:

As a member of the Big Island's Bee Keeping Association, we believe it is our duty to share with you the importance of honey bees..............

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Spread the Buzz:

Why the Big Island of Hawai‘i is Vital for the Future of Bees and Humanity

 

The Big Island of Hawai‘i is more than just a place of breathtaking beauty and sacred volcanic soil. It is one of the most important sanctuaries on Earth for the survival of bees. Nestled in the heart of the Pacific, this island serves as a lifeline for pollinators across the globe, supplying healthy, disease-free bees not only to the U.S. mainland, but also to Canada.

 

Hawai‘i’s unique ecosystem, year-round bloom cycles, and isolation from many mainland pests make it an ideal place for sustainable bee breeding and queen bee production. Beekeepers and scientists around the world know that if we lose Hawai‘i’s bees, we risk collapsing a critical part of the global food chain.

 

The Big Island: A Global Bee Hub

 

Queen Bee Production

The Big Island is one of the only places on Earth capable of supplying queen bees throughout the year. These queens are shipped worldwide to strengthen hives that are struggling due to climate change, pesticides, and disease.

 

Pesticide-Free Sanctuaries

Certain zones on Hawai‘i Island remain relatively free from harmful agricultural chemicals, providing bees with clean nectar sources and strong immune systems, something increasingly rare across industrialized nations.

 

Pollination Power

From almonds in California to apples in Washington to canola fields in Canada, crops across North America depend on the pollination power of bees bred in Hawai‘i. Every jar of honey, every fresh fruit, every crunchy nut owes something to this island’s quiet yet monumental labor of love.

 

A Wake-Up Call for the World

 

Without bees, there is no food. Without food, there is no future.

 

Bees pollinate nearly 75 percent of the crops we eat. They are not just essential to biodiversity. They are essential to survival. Yet, bee populations are in sharp decline due to habitat destruction, chemical exposure, monocropping, and environmental collapse. This is not just an environmental issue. It is a human issue.

 

The Time is Now: Help Hawai‘i Help the World

 

We need more farms on the Big Island. We need more hands in the soil, more flowers in bloom, more education, and more support.

 

Every donation, every purchase, every share of this message helps create new safe havens for bees. This is not charity. This is investment in the future of humanity. No amount of money is too much when it comes to saving the very creatures that make our survival possible.

 

This is your invitation to Spread the Buzz  not just awareness, but action. Hawai‘i’s bees are the Earth’s bees. And together, we can protect them.

 

Honey bees are HUGE money makers for U.S. agriculture. These social and hardworking insects produce six hive products – honey, pollen, royal jelly, beeswax, propolis, and venom – all collected and used by people for various nutritional and medicinal purposes.

 

Honey, of course, is the most well-known and economically important hive product. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Statistics Service, honey bees made 157 million pounds of honey in 2019. With the average cost of honey at $1.97 per pound, that’s a value of a little over $339 million.

 

After honey, beeswax is the second most important hive product from an economic standpoint. The beeswax trade dates to ancient Africa, Greece and Rome; and in Medieval Europe, the substance was a unit of trade for taxes and other purposes. The market remains strong today. Beeswax is popular for making candles, as an ingredient in artists’ materials and is used in leather and wood polishes. The pharmaceutical industry uses the substance as a binding agent, time-release mechanism and drug carrier. Beeswax is also one of the most commonly used waxes in cosmetics. The U.S. is a major producer of raw beeswax, as well as a worldwide supplier of refined beeswax.

 

The greatest importance of honey bees to agriculture isn’t a product of the hive at all. It’s their work as crop pollinators. The tremendous agricultural benefit of honey bees is estimated to be between 10 and 20 times the total value of honey and beeswax. In fact, bee pollination accounts for about $15 billion in added crop value. Honey bees are like flying dollar bills buzzing over U.S. crops.

 

Unfortunately, a widespread bacterial disease called American foulbrood is destroying our precious honey bees. This serious disease is caused by the spore-forming bacterium Paenibacillus larvae. It is also extremely contagious (to bees, not humans) and, if left to spread, can wipe out entire bee colonies. Fortunately, for our honey bees and the crops that depend on them for pollination, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three antibiotics to control this devastating honey bee disease.

 

THE BIOLOGY OF POLLINATION:

Pollination is vital to the approximately 250,000 species of flowering plants that depend on the transfer of pollen from flower to flower. The anther is the part of the stamen of a flower, usually borne on a stalk. The anther is the top-most part of the stamen and is the flower’s male reproductive portion. Normally made up of four pollen sacs, the anther produces and releases pollen. The stigma, the top of the flower’s female reproductive part, is covered in a sticky substance that catches and traps the pollen grains.

 

Depending on the specific plant species, the transfer of pollen from anther to stigma is achieved by wind, gravity, water, birds, bats, or insects. Some plants, such as pine trees and corn, produce light pollen that’s easily blown by wind. Other plants make heavy, sticky pollen that’s not easily blown from flower to flower. These plants rely on other agents, such as insects for example, to transfer the pollen.

 

Upon entering a flower, an insect such as a honey bee, brushes against the pollen on the outside of the anther and carries it to the stigma. Sometimes, the pollen grains only need to reach the stigma of the same flower or another flower on the same plant. But often, the pollen must travel to the stigma of a flower on a different plant of the same plant species.

 

A BEE'S DINNER PLATE:

Honey bees are vegetarians. Nectar and pollen collected from flowering plants are the entrees on a bee's dinner plates. Bees harvest the nectar and convert the sugary liquid to honey, the insects’ primary source of carbohydrates. Honey provides the bees with the energy for flight, colony maintenance, and general daily activities. Pollen, often called “bee bread,” is the bees’ main source of protein. Pollen also provides the bees with fatty acids, minerals and vitamins. The protein in pollen is necessary for hive growth and young bee development.

 

Depending on the season, weather, and availability of nectar and pollen-bearing blossoms; the size of a honey bee colony varies from 10,000 to 100,000 bees. A typical size colony, made up of about 20,000 bees, collects about 125 pounds of pollen per year. Bees carry the pollen in specialized structures on their hind legs called “pollen baskets,” or corbiculae (meaning “little baskets” in Latin). A honey bee can bring back to the colony a pollen load that weighs about 35 percent of its body weight. In a single day, one worker bee makes 12 or more trips from the hive, visiting several thousand flowers. On these foraging trips, the bee can travel as far as two to five miles from the hive. Although honey bees collect pollen from a variety of flowers, a bee limits itself to one plant species per trip, gathering one kind of pollen.

 

BEES FILL AMERICAN DINNER PLATES: 

Honey bees are not native to the United States. Most crops grown in the U.S. aren’t natives either. Both the bees and crops evolved together in other areas of the globe and were brought here by European settlers. Information suggests that the first honey bee colonies arrived in the Colony of Virginia from England early in 1622. 

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Today, the commercial production of more than 90 crops relies on bee pollination. Of the approximately 3,600 bee species that live in the U.S., the European honey bee [scientifically named Apis mellifera] is the most common pollinator, making it the most important bee to domestic agriculture. About one-third of the food eaten by Americans comes from crops pollinated by honey bees, such as apples, melons, cranberries, pumpkins, squash, broccoli, almonds and many more. Without the industrious honey bee, American dinner plates would look quite bare.

 

A PERILOUS FUTURE:

Honey bees are indispensable to U.S. agriculture, yet their future and the future of the dependent agricultural economies are perilous. The apiculture industry continues to battle multiple threats to the health and number of honey bee colonies. With three FDA-approved antibiotics available to control American foulbrood, beekeepers will hopefully lose fewer bees. 

 

REFERENCES:

 

Bogdanov S. Bee-HexagonExternal Link Disclaimer. 

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National Agricultural Statistics Service, Agricultural Statistics Board, USDA. Honey. Released March 19, 2020.

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CBI (Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countriesExternal Link Disclaimer) Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Promising EU export markets for vegetable oils, fats and waxes for cosmetics. June 2011.

 

Sanford MT. Protecting Honey Bees From Pesticides. Entomology and Nematology Department, Florida Cooperative Extension, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Publication #CIR534. Original publication date April 25, 1993. Revised May 2003.

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Flores A. Improving Honey Bee Health. Agricultural Research. February 2008.

 

Forest Service, USDA. What is Pollination?External Link Disclaimer

 

Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium (MAAREC). PollinationExternal Link Disclaimer. MAAREC Publication 5.2. February 2000.

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Ellis A, Ellis J, O’Malley M, et al. The Benefits of Pollen to Honey BeesExternal Link Disclaimer. Entomology and Nematology Department, Florida Cooperative Extension, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Publication #ENY152 (IN868). Original publication date September 2010.

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Back Yard Beekeepers Association. About HoneybeesExternal Link Disclaimer.

 

MAAREC. Bees Are BeneficialExternal Link Disclaimer. MAAREC Publication 1.1. February 2000.

 

MAAREC. The Value of Honey Bees in the Mid-Atlantic RegionExternal Link Disclaimer.

 

Hackett KJ. Bee Benefits to Agriculture, in Forum. Agricultural Research. March 2004.

 

Oertel E. History of Beekeeping in the United StatesExternal Link Disclaimer. Beekeeping in the United States, Agriculture Handbook Number 335; pp. 2-9. Revised October 1980.

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The Pollinating Insects – Biology, Management and Systematics Research Unit, Agricultural Research Service, USDA. Research Strategy.

 

 

 

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