National Pollinator Week Prompts PETA Plea: Be Sweet to Bees!

Avoiding Honey, Planting Flowers Just a Couple of Ways to Help Imperiled Pollinators

For Immediate Release:
June 13, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

With National Pollinator Week—an international celebration of the crucial ecological role played by bees, birds, butterflies, bats, and beetles—fast approaching, PETA is encouraging everyone to do their part to help protect imperiled honeybees. See below for the group’s top tips for being sweet to bees:

• Avoid honey, beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, and other products that come from bees in favor of vegan lip balms, candles, and other items.
• Always use cruelty-free sweeteners, such as agave and coconut nectar, maple syrup, molasses, brown rice syrup, and stevia.
• Plant flowers—including sunflowers, wild lilac, lavender, and flowering cactus—that will provide bees with nectar and pollen. If you don’t have space for a garden, growing herbs—including mint, chives, sage, thyme, parsley, and oregano—on a windowsill or balcony can also help feed bees.

“National Pollinator Week is the perfect time for everyone to take small steps in behalf of struggling honeybees, who simply want to be able to enjoy the fruit of their labor without humans snatching it for themselves,” says PETA Associate Director of Campaigns Danielle Katz. “PETA is encouraging caring people to leave honey for the bees and create a little buzz about the importance of protecting these industrious animals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that bees have a complex form of communication based on sight, motion, and scent. They alert members of their hive to food, new hive locations, and nectar supplies through intricate “dance” movements. A single worker bee may visit up to 10,000 flowers in one day and, in her lifetime, produce only a teaspoonful of honey. As a result of disease, pesticides, and climate change, the honeybee population has been nearly decimated—but because the demand for their honey remains high, these tiny animals are being factory-farmed just as chickens, pigs, and cows are.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.