At GoodBulb, we may be in the business of lighting up your spaces, but we also enjoy shedding light on a variety of cool, intriguing topics. Our passion extends beyond light bulbs; it's about illuminating minds with fascinating stories, innovative ideas, and a moment to brighten your day with content that sparks curiosity, inspires creativity, and brings a little extra shine to your daily scroll.
Shining a light on people and organizations who share our love for the planet becomes second nature to us when we are all working to create a brighter tomorrow. Our planet is our home, and finding small ways to make big changes is the only way to keep our home alive. Saving the bees is a big endeavor, but a necessary one.
“There is a concerted effort for bringing bees back onto the planet… We do not realize that they are the foundation, I think, of the growth of the planet, the vegetation,” said Morgan Freeman on his impulse to convert his 124-acre Mississippi ranch into a bee sanctuary.
New to the endeavor, having only been an official beekeeper for roughly 2 weeks at the time of his interview revealing his activities to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Freeman stated that the bees were brought to his ranch from Arkansas, and, being out of their known environment, they do not know where the food is.
“I feed them sugar and water,” he said, asserting that he knows how to care for the bees, adding that he never wears a bee suit or that he will ever be stung, and that he does not intend on ever harvesting honey or causing disruption to the hives. “You have to resonate [with the bees].”
Declining bee populations are having a profound effect on agriculture around the world. Bees and other pollinators are the main components in sustaining crops of all kinds, and without them, we would suddenly find ourselves in a dangerous food shortage the likes of which our planet would never recover from.
In 2013, this threat was recognized on a global scale and the European Commission took action to ban the use of bee-killing pesticides and insecticides that had previously become some of the most widely-used chemicals treating our crops. The use of these pesticides is what the EC believes led to “colony collapse disorder” within pollinator populations, and is also believed to be related to the California almond orchard crisis that continues to worsen.
The United States and Europe have seen a yearly hive loss of 30 percent or more since 2003, with that number reaching almost 40 to 50 percent since the winter of 2013. This is not good news for anyone who likes to eat, as such a rapid decline in populations of some of Earth’s most important animals spells disaster for our food supply. The good news is that as more and more people become aware of this growing issue, actions are being taken to help boost bee populations and spread an understanding of how to prevent further decline.
Organizations like The Honey Bee Conservancy breaks down easy-to-follow steps on how we, as individuals, can aid in preserving bee and pollinator populations by making small changes to how we live our lives – including refraining from killing them out of fear. Remember, bees are our friends, and squishing them to prevent getting stung is a learned behavior that we must work to change.