At the Green Garage, we have long been interested in bees and their survival. We know that bees are vital to our global food supply and our worldwide ecosystem, pollinating 90% of the world’s crops and 80% of all flowering plants.
Wild bee populations, however, are in decline due to habitat loss, pesticides, climate change and disease. That’s one of the reasons we maintain Michigan native gardens around our building and in our green alley. We not only want to support our local bee population, but also to encourage others to use pollinator-friendly native plants in their gardens and landscapes, too.
So we were especially interested to hear about the work of a local beekeeper, John Szarafinski, at our community lunch last Friday, June 5.
John is a neighbor of the Green Garage, a member of our virtual office community, and a second-generation beekeeper. He keeps some of his hives just down the street from us at the North Cass Community Garden. During his talk, he shared some of his fascinating, up-close-and-personal knowledge about bees. For instance, did you know that…
- Worker bees live only about 6 weeks?
- They spend days 18-21 of their short lives guarding the hive from intruders, and then leave to forage after day 22?
- A queen bee lays 2,000 eggs a day?
- Michigan has 3 ‘honey-flow seasons,’ with bees collecting nectar from different sources in each season?
John was able to pack quite a bit of information about bees in the space of ten minutes. If you’d like to hear the full talk, please click below.
Join us for our next community lunch, on Friday, June 19th, for a Juneteenth reflection and celebration.