What Did You Do for National Honey Bee Day?

There is a day for that you ask? Yes and it was formerly called National Honey Bee Awareness Day. Beekeepers in the U.S. started National Honey Bee Day to bring awareness and appreciation to the bee industry. The theme for this year was "Ban ignorance, not honey bees". The goal of the day is to "educate the public about beekeeping, while helping the overall public understand the importance and contributions that honey bees provide."


This year there was some confusion as both August 15 and 22 appeared on different resources as the day of observance. I observed National Honey Bee Day this past Saturday by creating two new photographic art images of bees going about their all important job of pollinating flowers. You are getting a sneak peek of a portion of each piece of art in this post. Hopefully this will be a piece in the puzzle for starting a conversation about the importance of bees and what we can do to help support them. (Such as, what is your favorite vegetable or fruit and does it require a pollinator such as a bee to set the fruit? Hint: most fruits and vegetables require a pollinator to do so.)(What can you do to support honey bees? Reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides that likely lead to CCD (colony collapse disorder). The Omni Hotel in Dallas, TX has a great plan as seen in this article.)

Celebrate Pollinators During Pollinator Week

When I heard that this was National Pollinator Week (June 15-21, 2015) I decided to make a collage from some of my pollinator images to celebrate their beauty and hard work. It quickly became clear that I would have to severely limit what I included in the collage. I have quite a few images of different bees, butterflies and other insects seen busily gathering nectar and thereby pollinating a wide variety of flowers. I decided to limit this collage to a bird and some of the bees.

You can click on the image to see a larger view. I was going to do some research and identify the pollinators that I included in the collage. After finding out that there are 9 different bumblebees in Texas and a couple of insects that mimic them and because I included two pollinators that look to me somewhat like bees but I suppose they could be mimics too, I decided that IDing each one was beyond the scope of this post. I can tell you that the bottom right photo is of a European honey bee pollinating my blackberry flowers and the pollinator above that is a hummingbird. I think the upper left image is of a carpenter bee and the lower left is one of the 9 species of bumblebees that live in TX. If any of you know if that is correct or what those other two pollinators are, please let us know in the comments to this post.

National Pollinator Week was put into place by the U.S. Senate in 2007. They directed the Secretary of Agriculture to designate a week in June of each year as National Pollinator Week. Pollinators are vital to the production of crops and propagation of most plants. It is important that we strive to make a healthy ecosystem to support the pollinators.

If you want to attract pollinators to your yard, their needs are the same as for any other wildlife you want to attract. Provide shelter, water and food sources. To find out more about the specific needs of pollinators and to find out if there are any fun events planned for this week in your area, check out pollinator.org .