Environmental Policy
We are passionate about doing what we can to preserve the future of honeybees and their place in our world. Bee America offers its customers the confidence of knowing exactly how our bees are treated, what sustainable land-management practices we utilize, the nutritional quality of our honey, and how it was harvested. By buying honey from us, you are making an environmentally-sensitive decision to support a source of natural ingredients.
We participate in these green practices:
• Environmentally Preferable Products
We sell only natural honey and honey products, with no additives or artificial preservatives.
• Renewable Energy
We installed a solar panel array on the roof in 2013.
• Recycling
Our honey is sold in glass jars, which can be recycled or repurposed.
• Water Conversation
We have two closed water features in our apiary where the honeybees can drink clean water. Trees shade each water feature to minimize evaporation by the sun.
• Storm Water Management and Design
As our apiary is located on a hill, we have extensive stormwater run-off mitigation to prevent erosion.
The importance of honey bees to our way of live cannot be overstated. Bees pollinate 71 out of the 100 or so crops that we humans rely upon for 90% of our food. Bee America believes that every person can have a positive impact on the health and very survival of honey bees. Our apiary implements the following practices and encourages our customers, neighbors and friends to do the same:
- Plant native plants to grown in your ecoregion. These plants will provide important pollinator forage and protection. Enriching your garden with native plants means you are landscaping with flowers, shrubs and trees that are naturally suited to the environment in which you live. Native plants require less water and aren’t dependent on pesticides in order to thrive.
- Avoid the use of insecticides and use natural pest control instead (i.e., prevention, beneficial insects and nontoxic remedies). Astonishingly, homeowners use about three times the quantity of pesticides as do farmers, which amounts to approximately 136 million pounds of pesticides a year for residential use alone in North America. In fact, residential use of pesticides is primarily responsible for most surface water contamination and the majority of animal poisonings.
- Consider letting certain parts of your yard "go wild" and return to their natural state as they can support more ecosystem diversity.
- Keep your garden well-watered so its flowers produce more nectar (provided you are not under drought restrictions).
- Cut your grass less frequently so that pollinator-friendly plants like daisies, clover and other wildflowers can grow up and bloom.
- Shelter pollinators in your yard by installing bat houses and bee nests.
- If feasible, leave dead tree trunks alone as homes for wood-nesting bees.
- Insure a fresh water supply—leave out a shallow bowl filled with water and floating wine corks or river stones for pollinators to safely land on to drink.
