This week marks one of the biggest events of the year for us honey geeks: Pollinator Awareness Week. We’re doing everything we can to get the word out about our itty, bitty buzzing buddies around the world. In case you haven’t heard, not only do pollinators magically make our favorite sweet stuff out of just about any kind of pollen they can find, they’re also a key part of plant reproduction, supporting life all the way up the food chain.

Partners in Pollination

Year-round, we partner with our friends over at PACE– that’s Pollinator Awareness through Conservation and Education – to help raise awareness of just how crucial pollinators are to our food supply and ecosystem. With every purchase of our raw and unfiltered honey, a portion of proceeds go to PACE and their mission of restoring habitats for our little heroes.

Pollination Education

If you really want to learn about pollination, there’s no better way than getting down and dirty: planting pollinator-friendly wildflowers. To encourage more of this ecological activism, we’ve created specialized wildflower seed packets that can bloom just about anywhere in the US. Soon, we’ll be passing them out around the country and growing homes for local pollinators from coast to coast.

To demonstrate just how important and complex pollination is, we’ve created a new page on our site that dives deep on seeds, bees and everything in between: Seeds for Bees.

Pollinator Problems

Though we definitely have a favorite pollinator – who doesn’t? – there are more out there than you might expect. For starters, there are the thousands of other species of bees, but plenty of other insects and animals pitch in to pollinate as well: wasps, ants, flies, moths, beetles, bats, birds, rodents, lizards, monkeys and even humans all play a part.

So what’s the big deal? Why do pollinators need an awareness week? A big reason is biodiversity. If pollinators’ numbers dwindle, or they become too genetically similar, they can become more at risk for communicable diseases that wipe out entire populations. We need to encourage pollinators of all kinds, all over the world to prevent this. Another is our food security: pollinators help humans produce many of our favorite crops, including potatoes, onions, cotton and avocados. That’s why many local beekeepers truck their bees around the country from farm to farm: a well-organized hive with thousands of professional pollinators helps increase crop yields and keeps farmers in business.

So, now that you’re aware of pollinators and all they do, what’s next? A few simple steps: spread the word, plant a pollinator garden, eat honey and save the bees!