Melissa Bees – Pollinating the Earth with Gardens and Hives
Poland is the size of New Mexico and contains 900,000 hives, according to Jacob Gabka, a queen breeder from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. We met at Sue Cobey’s queen-rearing class last summer when he was doing research alongside the creator of the New World Carniolan Queen. He informed me there are only 2.4 million hives total in the U.S. and that 1.5 million of them are used for almond pollination. We have a long way to go in this country to achieve the depth of devotion to bees that the Polish have. I asked him if he’d seen the video of Polish beekeepers protesting GMOs in Warsaw a few months prior. He said no, so I got my laptop out to show him. Interestingly, several times that day we discussed in class the necessity of clean land for queen rearing programs; they’re often sequestered away from agricultural areas as bees are quite sensitive to chemicals and less likely to rear successfully in spray areas. He chuckled as he watched and I told him of my vision of dubbing American children’s voices over the old Polish beekeepers. My dream finally came true when a group of my beekeeping students and community got together to make this video. I hope it will spur American beekeepers to action to help protect the bees and our children from the harmful effects of GMOs.