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Bee Thoughtful: Why you should not plant the free Wildflower seeds Cheerios wants to give you

Why you should not plant the free wildflower seeds Cheerios wants to give you

Have you heard about the latest effort put forth by Cheerios? Their intentions are honestly fantastic and we applaud their decision to help raise awareness regarding our very concerning bee situation… but their method of trying to help may have the exact opposite affect.

Cheerios has an active campaign stating they will send packets of various wildflower seeds to people all over the country. Sounds great right? It did until you start to examine what they’re sending and where it could end up.

Free Wildflower Seeds Cheerios

Damaging Reality

Perhaps I don’t have all the facts, but my understanding is once you’ve sent in for a free sample you are likely to receive any of the following:

Forget-Me-Not, Wallflower, Poppy, Coneflower, Aster, Flax, Baby Blue, Gilia, Indian Blanket, Tidy-tips, and several others. Here’s the problem, if you’re not paying attention you could end up planting something in your region that may not belong there, and may not be welcome.

Forget-Me-Nots, for example, are a banned noxious weed in MA and CT. The California Poppy may be awesome for CA, but move to the southeastern states and you you’ve got an invasive exotic pest plant. The fact that most of these wildflowers aren’t even native to the United States- poses a question of- will it actually have a positive impact on bees in the first place? Who were the people who put this list of flowers together? Did they consider the fact that it could have the exact opposite effect?!

Not all out-of-region plants are ‘Bad’ but…

When a plant is introduced to an area that is outside of its native range, it doesn’t make them a ‘bad plant’ – but it can use up resources the native plants rely on in that region. Disease can spread, and cause physical changes to the areas – creating big problems.

Don’t get me wrong, the effort put forth by Cheerios is a good idea and is conceptually sound but it’s half-assed. Unless there is a team behind the curtain that will be sending certain seeds to certain areas- we need to be careful. We are in this bee dilemma because us humans have been extremely careless with the way we do things. If this endeavor isn’t performed with the utmost care, we could find that we’re doing much more harm than good. My understanding is you’ll receive one packet with seeds of all these flowers. Ahhhhh!

Cheerios is relying on the individual to do their own research- which isn’t impossible but it is highly unlikely. They hear the word free, and the phrase “save the bees” and they think they’re doing something good. It’s half true. Let’s hope we can all pay a little more attention before planting something that may not be long here. While you’re at it, DO look up wildflowers that are native to your home and plant some. Take the spirit of Cheerios idea into your own hands and help create a better world for our bees 🙂

Bee Thoughtful: Not all Honey is created Equal

Not All Honey is created Equal

In 2016, Food Safety News revealed a study that claimed over 76% of honey sold in your average store is “fake”, full of toxic syrups and sugars. They are also supposedly rotten with antibiotics and heavy metals.

It starts with the diet

Without a strong nutritional foundation, bee colonies will suffer greatly. They greatly rely on carbohydrates, as they are a key source of energy needed for foraging and hive activities. Honeybees naturally find their carbohydrates when collecting honeydew and nectar.

Unfortunately, many commercial honey manufacturers supplement their colonies with sucrose solution, inverted sugar syrup, or syrups like starch syrup and high fructose corn syrup. As you can imagine, the kind of honey produced is not anywhere near what you’re led to believe and it has no nutritional value.

Antibiotics

While the intentions may be good, the high doses of antibiotics given to honey bees for disease prevention are a huge disadvantage in many ways. These veterinary antibiotics, such as chloramphenicol, streptomycin and sulfonamides can do great harm to humans in large amounts. For example, chloramphenoicol could cause cancer and aplastic anemia. It is simply “unnatural” to be treating honey bees in this way and it directly negatively affects not only bee colonies, but their honey product as well.

Pesticides

Anyone in tune with the state of our environment knows pesticides are to blame for a lot of our problems. That’s why it drives me nuts to read that the European Food Safety Authority labeled clothianidin as too dangerous to be used on crops, yet the U.S. remains deaf and blind to the risks.

Quite frankly, America isn’t paying attention, as that very chemical is still used on nearly 143 million acres of our crops. This and other pesticides like imidacloprid and thiamethoxam are not only linked to death but are still widely used in the U.S. – failing to follow other countries lead in banning them. This is no joke.

It’s just… fake

Honey should have bee pollen. That’s how this whole thing works in the natural world. However, in the land of greed- commercial honey manufacturers use special equipment to extract the pollen. They then mix in honey from other countries (which, is illegal!) – leaving people with absolutely no idea where it came from. Very shady stuff.

How do you know it’s fake?

-Artificial honey will stay in tact if you put a drop on your thumb, whereas fake honey will spill and spread quickly,

-Pour a glass of water- and drop a teaspoon of honey into it. If it quickly dissolves, you have fake honey on your hands. Real honey will stay solid and will fall to the bottom of the glass in tact.

-If you’ve had your honey on the shelf for a long period of time, you should see that it has crystallized if it is real. Fake honey will look like plain old syrup forever and ever.

-Be careful if you try this one- it is said if you dip the tip of a matchstick in honey and then go to light it- the flame will burn off of the honey. If it’s fake, it won’t light because of its “moisture”.

While we do not yet make our own honey (we’re learning!), we only source ours from the best. All natural, delicious, and rich with REAL nutrients!

Bee Thoughtful: How to turn your land into a bee friendly habitat

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Turn your land into a bee friendly habitat

As we’ve already mentioned in our introduction, the bees are in serious trouble. Recently, seven species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees were added to the endangered list. While some headlines out there would have you believe the entire class is on the list (it’s not)- this is still great cause for concern. We’re starting you off with a few tips that will help you turn your land into a bee friendly habitat so we can all help keep them around. Keep checking back for more over the coming weeks.

Choose bee-friendly plants

You will make the bee population very happy if you make the effort to plant native wildflowers, flowering herbs, berries and varying flowering fruits & vegetables. Here in Massachusetts, honeybees favor:

Mint, basil, sage, thyme, oregano, lavender, chives, buck wheat.
Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries.
Cucumbers, tomatoes, winter squash, pumpkins, watermelon, flowering broccoli
Crocus, black-eyed susans, lilacs, wisteria, tulips, sunflowers, clovers, snowdrops, bee balm, honeysuckle, peony & more.
Maple, Willow, Black Locust and Sumac are great trees to plant if you have the space.

All of these plants make for excellent food sources for bees. Remember not to get rid of your dandelions, as those are the early Spring “go to” food source for bees before everything else has bloomed. When it comes to bees, dandelions are NOT weeds. Ideally you will pick the plants that have the longest blooming cycles, and/or the ones who have successive blooms. You want to encourage the bees to keep coming back over and over again.

Be sure to keep the same plants together, ideally one square yard of the same kind. It will do a better job at attracting the bees, and they’ll have plenty to work with when they find them.

Let your plants flower

Let the flowers on your plants remain as to allow the bees to get the pollen and nectar from them when they need it. When you grow herbs or veggies like Broccoli, leave the plant intact after you’ve harvested. Letting the plants go to flower give the bees an extra food source, especially toward the end of the year when everything else is dying. You should leave these plants in the gardens until the flowers are gone.

One mans weed is a meal for the Bees

Society would have you believe that weeds serve no purpose and only exist to frustrate the passionate gardener, this is unfortunate! While the aesthetic of certain weeds may not match your taste, consider the benefits dandelions, clovers, loosestrife, milkweed, goldenrod and other flowering weeds can give to our struggling bee population. The reality is, these weeds are crucial to a bees ability to survival.
If you have a nice lawn, leave the weeds alone. Find the beauty in them and appreciate their role in providing an extra, much needed food source for the bees. Sometimes looks aren’t the only thing that matter when you’re trying to serve nature over yourself. It certainly doesn’t mean you can’t take good care of your landscaping, but bee thoughtful 🙂

In the coming weeks we will be sharing information on the importance of quitting the chemicals (pesticides, herbicides etc). Please stay tuned and plan to implement these pieces of advice for the upcoming Spring season and beyond. Thanks for beeing thoughtful. Share your tips with us in the comments!

Your purchases from our store help us continue our educational efforts, if you’re a honey-lover consider trying our delicious varieties of honey!

Intro: How you can help save the bee population

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Help Save The Bee Population: Intro

Over the coming weeks we look forward to sharing helpful information on ways you can help save the bee population. Members of our family, including myself, recently joined the local Beekeepers association. We will be attending “Bee School” with hopes of starting our own hives/colonies.

As a rare breeds farm, we are all too familiar with the concept of endangered animals. That being said, our environment can technically afford to lose certain bloodlines over others. This is not the case for bees, however. The steady decline in our bee population is cause for severe concern. If we loose too many more, it could cost every one of us our lives as we know them if we don’t act fast.

What has caused the decline in bee population?

Insecticides are arguably the biggest global killer of bees out there, alongside big agriculture and global warming. The health of honey bees and wild pollinators are especially affected by destruction of habitat, and lack of forage due to toxic pesticides. Big agriculture and the effects of their irresponsible chemical spraying has resulted in a clear, direct negative impact on both the individual bee as well as their entire colony world-wide.

The effects of global warming are also taking out huge numbers of bees. Freezing cold winters that last into spring have decimated colonies up to 70%, like in 2014 in Iowa for example. In the last 5 years 30% of our nations bee population disappeared. In the same about of time, nearly a third of the colonies have died. We are facing a serious crisis that cannot be ignored for another minute.

Beekeepers have noted this steady decline since 2006. Without insect pollination, 1/3 of the crops we eat would be affected. We would be forced to figure out a different way to pollinate them. Apples, strawberries, almonds and and tomatoes in particular would be most greatly affected. An article in the September 2016 edition of Newsweek reported that bees pollinated somewhere around $40 billion worth of our nations agricultural produce each year.

There’s a lot to talk about

We are only tapping the surface of this extremely disturbing situation and will be bringing much more information to you each week. There are so many ways you can help save the bee population that we will go over in heavy detail. In the meantime, do your best to shop locally grown produce, don’t use pesticides in your yard, and consider bee-friendly plants in your gardens this coming spring.

Can’t wait for more updates? Read this detailed description of the declining bee population.

Support our educational efforts and all of the rare breeds on our farm by making a purchase from our country store!