Save the Bees

This morning, I was sitting on my couch while reading the blog Serious Eats. While drinking my tea with honey, I noticed a link to something that is near and dear to my food loving stomach. I am pretty sure that not everyone who is reading my blog knows about the disappearing honeybees in the U.S. and what a problem this could cause in the future. The other day, I brought this up to a friend and she hadn't even heard of the problem. As an eater of food, you should be alarmed. (If you aren't an eater of food or hate food, I am not sure why you are reading this blog!) Did you know that honeybees pollinate a third of all fruits and vegetables we eat? Serious Eats put out a little six-minute documentary about the Bee Colony Collapse on their blog about it. It's short. It's informative. It's not going to kill you (like some of those documentaries on the History Channel) to watch it.

I am not saying that you need to go donate all your money to research, but there are little things that you can do.

1) Plant some things in your garden to attract bees. Obviously, here in the Midwest, we aren't going to be planting much anytime soon, but you can put it on your list of things to do for next year. I found a list of plants for bees that might prove useful to the home gardeners in the bunch.

2) Support local honeybee farmers by buying local honey. The Lawrence Farmer's Market has a couple of local honey producers, so I am sure that you should be able to find some local stuff close to you too.

3) Buy Haagen-Daas' new vanilla honeybee flavor and they will donate to the Colony Collapse Research. I am not sure how much they have pledged to donate with your purchase, but a little bit is better than nothing. They also have a ridiculously cute website to Help Save The Bees.

4) If you are a facebook junkie (like I am), you can join the cause Save the Honeybees. You can donate online or just spread the word to your friends about this issue. I just found it on fb and joined it today.

I am sure that there are lots of other things that would help in this cause, but I won't bore you any longer. It's just a foodie issue that doesn't seem to be getting better yet. I hope that this has opened your eyes to the problem if you haven't heard about it yet. Please do you little part to help and save the bees! I just want my honey........