We don't know what's happening
but still bees disappear.
If the bees stopped pollinating we wouldn't be able to produce the amount of food to keep
the current population fed.
Two thirds of the world food production depends on honeybees.
And, therefore, humans depend on bees.
Basically, my favorite saying is if the bees go we go, literally.
The more we can spread the awareness the better.
It's all about saving the bees right now.
This one was a swarm that I just poured in there.
And so they're building comb naturally.
Hi my name's Paul Hekimian and I'm the director at HoneyLove.
So this is what we do at HoneyLove.
We're urban beekeepers that rescue honeybees,
and we find them new homes.
So we're basically foster parents.
The current agricultural system is a big problem for honeybees.
Bees, as humans, need ten essential amino acids.
So they need diversity of pollen, which they cannot find often in areas that are heavily
managed by agricultural practices.
The agricultural bees are the pollinators.
They move them in big trucks from orchards to different farms around the country.
And those are the ones that are increasingly dying on a rapid scale.
We're protecting the bees that land in someone's home, they land in a tree,
and those bees are actually thriving in the urban environment because there's less pesticides.
They're not being trucked around in trucks.
And the urban environment with the feral bees that we deal with, meaning wild bees,
are thriving.
My philosophy with ecology is, you know, definitely a sustainable approach.
You know the great thing is, like, using local ingredients.
Everything tastes better.
Everything tastes fresher.
What Paul at HoneyLove is doing is incredible.
Not only in his back yard, but he's setting it up in other people's yards.
See how they can build a comb right on the frame like that?
When you taste this honey that this guy I know has some boxes full of bees and frames
and he hands me a frame and says, "Here."
As opposed to, you know, buying honey in a bottle that looks like a bear.
It tastes completely different.
These pesticides pollute the environment.
And they have an effect on honeybees.
For example, the bee is disoriented.
The bee loses stability to move and eventually to fly.
And to orientate in the field.
It's very important to support the research towards agricultural practices that use less
pesticides and still allow the farmers to have a good production.
It's been shown that's possible, but still the research in these fields is lacking.
Most of the research focuses on funding better pesticides.
But this is not the way.
Seeing how honey is actually made is incredible to me.
It's just nature, you know.
And it's opened up my eyes to a lot of the other processes.
Yes.
How are you?
Fine. How are you?
What kind of melon is this?
Whether it be, you know, the way things grow and biodynamic farming, I have a completely
different outlook on things now.
A big mission I have right now is to try to educate the next generation.
Because if kids growing up now can learn and understand these things, you know, I feel
like they're the answer to the problem
because we're all already kind of screwed.
[LAUGHS]
Now when you hear the word swarm you think, 'Oh my gosh, you know, these bees are coming
to, like, sting.'
They're not.
They're actually looking for a new home.
You could stand still and a swarm could go right past you and nothing would happen.
So you don’t want to call Vector Control or Pest Control.
You actually want to call a beekeeper.
And there's a lot of beekeepers, you'd be surprised, in your area.
When you have more and more organizations and more and more people donating their own
time to help make these issues better or to go away, we're definitely on the right road.
Kind of like the road to recovery.