Читать книгу Beekeeping For Dummies - Howland Blackiston - Страница 19

Keeping a hive in the backyard dramatically improves pollination and rewards you with a delicious honey harvest by themselves good enough reasons to keep bees. But today, the value of keeping bees goes beyond the obvious. In many areas, millions of colonies of wild (or feral) honey bees have been wiped out by urbanization, pesticides, parasitic mites, and a recent phenomenon called colony collapse disorder (otherwise known as CCD; see Chapter 11 for more information). Collectively, these challenges are devastating the honey bee population.

Many gardeners have asked me why they now see fewer and fewer honey bees in their gardens. It’s because of the dramatic decrease in our honey bee population. Backyard beekeeping has become vital in our efforts to reestablish new colonies of honey bees and offset the natural decrease in pollination by wild honey bees. I know of many folks who have started beekeeping just to help rebuild the honey bee population. A number of celebrities have become hobbyist beekeepers and publically promote the need to save bees. These high profile beekeepers include Morgan Freeman, Bruce Springsteen, Leonardo Di Caprio, Jennifer Garner, Scarlet Johansson, Jon Bon Jovi, and Samuel L. Jackson, to name a few.