Burt Talks to the Bees with Isabella Rossellini
While the world holds a fascination with the world of bees, Burt Shavitz, co founder of Burt’s Bees is a NYC Native whose fascination with these creatures changed his destiny. He became a beekeeper in upstate NY and incorporates natural ingredients and bee by products in all of his Burt’s Bee products. The term “worker bee” has been justifiably earned. The 19,500 species of bees are responsible for keeping the earth’s ecosystem in balance and assists in the production of about 1/3 of all food consumed on earth.
Since 2006, colonies of honey bees have been declining by about 30% each year where the bee workers are not returning to the hive. Perhaps it’s a similar situation to what human civilization has been experiencing in the Western World.
Basically, all of the work is done by female bees. They pollinate, gather the nectar and create the queen who is the only female enabled to mate. The females feed the male drones who’s only purpose is to entertain and mate with the queen. In the winter, the males are kicked out of the hive, and the worker bees store and create the honey. The queen bee mates 16 times a day and lays 1600 eggs per day. While there is no singular threat to Colony Collapse Disorder, perhaps the female bees spoke to the female flys who told them there is a life outside of the hive where you don’t have to spend your entire life working and feeding the men and putinh all of your eggs in one basket! Why shoule one queen have all the fun and mate. You can fly away and still gather the nectar.
For National Pollinator Week, we got a peek at Burt’s Bees set of short films, Burt Talks to the Bees, which stars Isabella Rossellini, and gave us a zany lighthearted approach that combines scientific accuracy with storytelling to meet the bees – the queen, the workers, and the drones so we can become educated and sympathetic to the bees’ plight. What we can do is buy local honey from farmers and try to plant flowers for bees to pollinate.
To view the film series and learn more about this partnership please visit www.burtsbees.com/wildforbees