posted by admin on May 26
Can Vanilla Ice Cream Help Our Honey Bees? Well it can if it’s Häagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream!
You must have been living in a cave if you haven’t heard about the current crisis facing the worlds bee population at the moment! Well, to be more precise - the human population!
Why humans? It’s the bees that are in trouble!
Well, yes, but without the bees flying around between flowers - there will be no more pears, nuts or apples - along with many other major seeds and vegetables. It is quoted that a third of all the food we eat has needed the honey bee! I kid you not. Bees are a necessary link in the pollination of many of the foods we eat - and without pollination - there is no fruit, nut, seed or vegetable for us to eat or use for cooking and this includes Vanilla itself!
Seriously - if you grew an apple tree in a bee-proof environment it would not grow a single apple in it’s life time! In Japan - farmers killed off their honey bees with pesticides and now have to pollinate all their own fruit trees by hand using feathers on sticks! Seriously.
And can you imagine how many people it would take to hand-pollinate the 60 million almond trees in California alone if the honey bees carry on disappearing? Let alone all the other crops we need them to pollinate.
Would it surprise you to know that there is a huge trade in honey bees across the world, where hives are transported all over the place to help pollinate giant mono-cultures of fruits and other crops that are too big for naturally occurring bees to pollinate. Without this paid influx of honey bees - the crop numbers would fall until its wasn’t worth farming that crop anymore.
So, what’s my point?
Well, after reading a book about this growing crisis - I found out that Häagen Dazs are one of the serious parties that are getting involved in research. They are funding the cause.
When you look at the fact that 50% of Häagen Dazs flavors are produced by bee pollination - they have a reason to get involved. Imagine the flavours you’d be getting otherwise: potato and sweetcorn ice cream doesn’t sound so good, does it!
They have set up a website about their involvement as well as containing research information about the plight of bees and what is being done - and more importantly - how you can get involved.
So go visit Help The Honey Bees and get involved - or go and buy their ice cream and contribute with a full tummy!
This is the first great initiative I have seen about this agricultural and natural disaster - has anyone seen any others?
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