Bee Aware Month (September), is the month when we ask New Zealanders to celebrate our hard-working bees. Not only do our bees produce a wonderful food source, they also play critical roles in our food chain, biodiversity and economy. The world needs bees!
New Zealand has a healthy bee population with nearly 925,000 hives, but bees still need our care and protection. Bees continue to face a number of threats including: biosecurity, disease, bugs and pesticides. Fortunately, there are some simple, easy things that everyone can do to help our bees.
How you can help
- Feed our bees – Bees need food and water. Planting bee-friendly wildflowers and providing a saucer of pesticide-free water for bees to drink, are simple, but very effective ways you can help improve bee health. Well-nourished bees are more capable of fending off disease and parasites.
- Eat New Zealand honey – Our bees create a wide range of delicious, high quality honeys. By eating these honeys you are supporting our beekeepers who work hard to care for our bees and their environment.
- Spray safely – Choose bee-safe pesticides if you are spraying your garden or consider whether spraying is necessary at all. Remember to spray when bees are away: early in the morning or at sunset.
We want to help the kiwi gardener help save the bees! Throughout the month we will be posting loads of information on how you can help the bees, how you can keep bees, competitions, recipes and more!
Come in store and see what you can grow to get the bees buzzing in your garden!
