How Can You Help the Honey Bees?

related articles

I couldn't help but click on the adorable honey bees buzzing around my computer screen. They are part of a promotional campaign by Häagen-Dazs to raise awareness about the honey bee crisis.

What – you don’t put honey on your cereal in your morning? Don’t put a dollop of the sweet stuff in your yogurt?

Even if honey isn’t obviously part of your daily routine, by now you you’ve heard the buzz: Honey bees are responsible for $15 billion worth of food production in the U.S. on an annual basis, according to our beekeeper blogger, Kim Flottum, and they’ve been disappearing due to various causes, mostly colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Surely you care about your apples, peaches, pears and plums, right? If the thought of losing those fruits doesn’t scare you, Flottum suggests getting concerned about food prices going up because of colony losses, or the idea that we’d be getting honey of questionable quality from cheaper sources.

Things aren’t getting better. Disease is crippling the biggest bee hives, and research desperately needs to be funded.

Fortunately one of the things you can do is eat some Häagen-Dazs vanilla honey bee ice cream guilt-free, knowing part of the proceeds goes to bee research. On its helpthehoneybees.com website, Häagen-Dazs offers other ways to assist, such as planting bee-friendly plants in your yard and supporting beekeepers’ work.

Here is a clip of the dramatic (there's opera!) Häagen-Dazs TV ad:

COMMENTS ()