Spring is a season of renewal. And for honey bees, it’s moving season. Across fields, forests, and farmlands, entire colonies lift off and take to the skies.   Some take flight in massive, swirling swarms, a ritual of reproduction and expansion. Others are gently coaxed into crates by beekeep...

Bees have been helping humans for thousands of years, not just by making honey but by pollinating crops that feed the world. In fact, many of our favorite foods are only available because of bee pollination. Honey bees alone contribute over $15 billion to U.S. agriculture annually through their v...

"We should keep this a secret," our guide told us, gesturing to the small, inconspicuous hilltop we were standing on, somewhere along the edge of California's Central Valley.  No, our guide was not a gold miner, drug smuggler or undercover agent. He's just a beekeeper named Cameron Robertson. ...

  Happy Pollinator Awareness Week!  Every year in June, our team at Local Hive takes some time to appreciate and spread the good word about our pollinators — both insect and human. Most people are aware that bees are pollinators, but humans play an important role, too. If a human brushes up again...

During the total solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024, people from Texas to Maine will be shrouded in darkness for about 5 minutes, and partially in the dark for about 2.5–3 hours. Source: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio  All across the country, temperatures will drop (slightly.) Traffic will c...

If you’re celebrating the holidays with your family, you’re kind of like a honeybee. While bees don’t put up decorations or buy each other expensive skincare, like we do during the holidays, they do have their own festivities. As winter approaches, bees celebrate by stocking up on nectar and maki...

Ahh, winter. The time of the year when the mornings are chilly and the mosquitoes are finally gone. But wait... if mosquitoes are gone, does that mean bees are gone too? Don’t worry. The bees are fine. If you’re asking, “Where did the bees go?”, the answer isn’t “far south”, like other animals an...

Honeybees are small. Really small. Each one is barely the size of a fingernail. Yet, somehow, all the bees in the U.S. make 125,000,000 pounds of honey every year. That’s more than the Titanic weighed! That means every year, U.S. bees make a literal boatload of honey. But how much does just one b...

Why are pollinators so important? What’s the buzz with all those species? And what exactly do they need from us humans?  Well, to put it simply, pollinators like bees, birds, butterflies and bats help plants reproduce and keep our environment diverse. Because of them, a lot of different plant spe...

Most kinds of animal activism involve us humans giving something up. We need to quit eating meat, or quit bulldozing forests, or stop construction to protect an endangered species. But pollinators are the exact opposite. We humans depend on them. In ways big and small, pollinators direct life on ...

Every year, the team at Local Hive makes sure to celebrate National Honey Month. But this year, we’ve got something bigger in mind. Not just one month, but 400 years of honey. That’s because bees and their honey have been a crucial part of this country since way back in 1622. It was in 1622 that ...

June 20–26th is Pollinator Week, a time for everyone everywhere to celebrate the species who pollinate flowers of all kinds. Why, you might ask, is a honey company so gung-ho about pollinators? Well, we don’t just love bees for honey. They’re also nature’s most important pollinator. There are tho...

Growing up, most of us didn’t think twice about bees unless we were unfortunate enough to get stung. So you’d be forgiven for thinking, “Bees are those little yellow-and-black-striped guys who sting and make honey.” You’d be forgiven, but you’d be wrong on pretty much all counts: Bees come in a ...

In the late 2000s, you couldn’t throw a honey dipper without hitting someone proclaiming, “Save the bees!” This was during the height of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), when beekeepers would lose as many as 60% of their hives every winter. Millions and millions of worker bees would inexplicably c...

There are two parts of Pollinator Awareness Week: conservation and conversation. And while we would never stop someone from planting a pollinator garden, supporting local beekeepers, or even becoming a beekeeper, this week is when we all need to be talking the talk about how our tiny striped frie...