Bees are essential to the agricultural community and help sustain biodiversity. According to Greenpeace, bees perform 80 percent of all pollination worldwide, and a single colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day. But it’s not just flowers. Our very survival depends on bees transferring pollen from male to female parts of plants that we eat. In fact, bees are responsible for a third of the food we eat.
Some interesting facts about bees:
- There are 20,000 species of bees in the world.
- A beehive can be home to 50,000 to 80,000 bees at its summer peak.
- It takes nectar from two million flowers to create a pound of honey
Another interesting, but sobering, fact: Bee populations worldwide are under threat from a variety of enemies. Drought, changes in land use, pollution and global warming are contributing to loss of habitat. In the early 2000s, scientists started witnessing entire colonies of bees dying off. This Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was eventually pinned primarily on the toxic stew of pesticides and fungicides in use in agriculture.
Canadiana Flag is raising awareness of the plight of bees. We have a pair of our own hives in Ontario’s cottage country. We’re reaching out to our customers—every customer around the holiday season gets a jar of our natural honey from those hives to remind them to keep bees top of mind. In spring, every order contains a bag of mixed clover seeds—red, crimson and white. Clovers are popular among bees and butterflies. We encourage our customers to spread the seeds where they can to attract these life-giving pollinators. This helps out the agricultural community by giving a place for bees and butterflies to feed and nest while they help pollinate the plants. Furthermore, besides providing a humbling Spring activity, this helps with plant conservation. It’s also a spring highlight for our staff to fill these bags from a massive bulk container.