Buzzing for National Honeybee Day
July 30, 2024
Ahead of the celebration on August 17, we caught up with resident horticulturist Matt Little.
A special holiday is coming up, but you may not know about it: National Honeybee Day will be celebrated on August 17. We’re big supporters of bees here at the Tides Inn. We have a Bee Meadow, plant flowers and vegetables that bees love and offer hands-on experiences that allow guests to learn more about the critical pollinators. We asked resident horticulturist Matt Little to share more about the creatures and why it’s important to celebrate them at least once a year.
Matt Little: Honeybee populations have suffered over the last couple of decades due to the rise of pesticide use and the loss of habitat in which to forage. National Honeybee Day is an education day, making the public aware of the environmental concerns and promoting beekeeping. The nonprofit conservation group HoneyLove manages it.
They’re critical to our well-being. One-third of the food we eat is pollinated by bees, butterflies and other creatures; honeybees alone are responsible for pollinating more than 130 types of fruits and vegetables. The way we do agriculture nowadays, growing orchards with thousands of trees, we need millions of bees at one time to do the pollination that type of growing requires.
The other reason they’re important is honey production. Humans have been using honey for probably 10,000 years. We’ve been keeping bees since the Ancient Egyptians.
They’re a little, fuzzy, brown-and-yellow banded bee. Fun fact: Honeybees are not native to the United States—they’re all European species that were brought to the East Coast in the 1620s. There are thousands of other native species of bees, from orchard bees to bumblebees. Some of them look similar to honeybees, but there’s a huge range of colors, shapes and sizes.
I will be opening our Bee Meadow and inviting guests, neighbors and the general public to come out for an open house to learn about beekeeping and thank the bees for all their work. Attendees can join brief beehive tours and taste the honey, too. This year’s event will be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on August 17.
Our resident artist, Theresa Schneveis will also be offering a lip balm–making class.
Did You Know?
Each individual honeybee, during the peak season when they're working really hard to make honey (April through early June), only lives five or six weeks. Honeybees cannot live on their own. They have to live in a colony; colonies can be upward of 50,000 to 70,000 individuals working together, with one queen per colony.
Not visiting Tides on National Honeybee Day? You can still support our bee efforts. Reserve our seasonal Beehive Experience to experience a day in the life of an apiarist, including donning a beekeeper suit and tasting local, raw honey.