Serious Eats Original Video: Save the Honeybees
As most serious eaters know, the folks at Häagen-Dazs are putting their money where their spoons are this year with a dedicated marketing effort aimed at increasing awareness of Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious condition that has caused a dramatic increase in honeybee colony losses. Häagen-Dazs is even donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of its new vanilla honeybee flavor ice cream to fund research to find out what exactly causes CCD.
As part of this extremely worthwhile endeavor Häagen-Dazs funded the first-ever Serious Eats-produced documentary about Colony Collapse Disorder, which I hope every serious eater will watch. For our little buzz-ementary we spent the day at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Westchester County, New York, where bees, farmers, and cooks work together to produce lots of seriously delicious food. So check out our Honeybee doc and start buzzing about Colony Collapse Disorder.
Thumbnail photograph from ©iStockphoto.com/szefei
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16 Comments:
I've done a couple of posts on this very subject. After wondering why my squash plants were flowering and then dying, I called Burpee for assistance. They told me I had to pollinate my squash plants since the bees that normally take care of this chore have been amongst the missing this year. Well, I became a proud Papa a week ago, when one of my female plants (which were incredibly scarse this year) began to produce squash. It's kind of unsettling to realize that news like "bees in shortage" is not only real, but affects all of us as well.
Boscompb at 12:57AM on 08/29/08
Didn't they discover the cause of the honeybee shortage a while ago? An extremely contagious fungal infection in the hives (brought about by pesticides weakening bees' immune system), or something?
Or was that just 'the theory' everyone ran with for a month or two?
stratusgd at 9:48AM on 08/29/08
Very nicely done. More docs like this please.
mandybrown at 10:41AM on 08/29/08
That is a riveting piece of information to have to digest. Thank you for this highly informative subject and a way to try to help, again Thank You. One day here thenext gone I have a hard time grasping that. God Bless Dona.
dona7734 at 4:17PM on 09/02/08
We take so much for granted. My father raised Honey Bees most of my rearing years. I would help him make the frames that sat in the hives. We would extract the honey and cone once the bees did their nature thing. It was a blast. I am sadden that today with all the pesticides floating in our air, it has taken down this beautiful insect. I live in the heart of Texas. I fight the Ag office here regular. We live on a farm on the river. There are fields all around us. Every year I have to fight the planes roaring and taking the top of my home off. One year they sprayed a pesticide that was removed from the market years ago. I started getting dizzi and sickly feeling. Once calling around and finding out what they sprayed I tried to go to all lengths to have the Government do something, which as usual, I always come to a dead end. If this does this to humans, what is it doing to these insects. We need a phone number or organization that you can call and complain to and maybe if everyone works together to protect what God put on this earth and the purpose they and we all serve, maybe it would be a better world for our children and grandchildren.
TeresaH at 5:36PM on 09/02/08
Well done, Ed, and well worth doing. I had been wondering why my garden was so deficient this year -- the squash blossoms never set fruit, the tomato plants had very few tomatoes, even the cherry tomatoes, etc. What did bear heavily was the blueberry and blackberry bushes, and now I'm wondering if something other than a honeybee was helping.
Caramanlis at 7:31PM on 09/03/08
Tomatoes are self-pollinating. Honey bees leave them alone as the flowers have no nectar and honey bees can't get to the pollen. Bumble bees and sweat bees (Halictus ligatus) can pollinate tomatoes. The benefit of that pollination is almost nil as pollen drops with the slightest breeze anyways. The downside of insect pollination of tomatoes is heirloom tomato flowers must be bagged or plants isolated to prevent cross-pollination.
Did notice a slight drop in fruit set in CT this summer from last. Suspect the humidity and rain clumped pollen and prevented pollination. Temperature is the most common cause of poor fruit set. Pollen becomes sterile as temperature rise above 86. Night temperature above 75 and below 55 reduce pollination as well.
More honey bees here on the central CT coast than last. But I have hundreds more flowers and a heptacodium in bloom which really draws them. What is missing are Monarch Butterflies! That might be the lack of sun. I dunno....last year was wonderful for Monarchs. This year if I see one a day I'm lucky.
DavidinCT at 7:10AM on 09/11/08
I'm so glad that Häagen-Dazs is funding research to discover the cause of CCD. I haven't lost any hives to CCD, but I have seen many of the problems they suspect contribute to the problem. I would be just devastated if I lost half my hives.
Boscompb, they do not yet know what causes CCD.
Honey at 2:29PM on 09/21/08
We had alot off bees in N.S.This year.
rsorrell at 2:03PM on 10/25/08
I live in So Cal and have noticed that in my area, we seem to have more and more dead bees in our yard. I don't know what the cause is and if they are honey bees or what but it is terribly sad. I hope we can resolve this problem in my lifetime.
ddvierra68 at 2:09PM on 12/03/08
Help, this video is autoplaying!
kathryn at 1:31AM on 12/26/08
Hi Ed...I think you all did great on this video and explaining to everyone about CCD and why it's so important for all of us to help protect the honeybee. I myself didn't realize that CCD was going on with the honeybees and what it was. I buy a lot of honey myself in large quanities at a time at my local grocery store (12#8oz.container;which is a 1 gallon 8oz. container) that I use for tea.
So as you see honey is very important to me. I also love to garden and love photography and write. So I take a lot of photos every year of not just of my flowers & garden but also I love to follow all the bees around and take several photos of them on the flowers pollinating the flowers. I have a number of close-up shots of all kinds of bees with the pollen on their legs as they pollinate the flowers.
Sorry for getting carried away here, I just think that it's amazing how bees work and people don't seem to realize how important a bees job really is. Without them like you all mentioned in your video...we would be without a lot of things. Well your video tells all!
Thanks Ed & Everyone Else for putting such a great video together and let me know what I can do to help out.
Peace & Love,
Sunshine
P.S. Keep Smiling Everyone!!! Because God doesn't make Loosers...He makes Winners in All of Us!!!
SunshinesSunflower at 10:33AM on 12/31/08
Thank for this post.
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Doğum günü mesajları
komikya at 9:20AM on 01/25/09
I would just like to add my thanks for producing such a beautifully done piece on the honeybee plight. My husband and I started beekeeping last year and unfortunately had a disaster. In June we had a swarm and it neccessitated requeening the hive. Initially it seemed to be going well, but we soon determined that it didn't take and we were heartbroken. We will be getting more bees this spring and are determined to not give up. We feel that it is our ever so tiny part in a crucial humanitarian effort.
Again, congratulations on the intelligent, educational effort put forth by SE and Haagen-Dazs in the form of this wonderful video. It puts a very serious issue in terms all can grasp, even those who feel as long as they are able to purchase the honey bears with the yellow lids in the grocery, all is well with the universe.
frederika at 12:16PM on 02/10/09
Way to go guys!!!
It amazes me that the public doesn't yet realize the grave seriousness of this issue. No bees = no food!
I have been keeping bees for about 7 years now and have seen CCD first hand. I have also seen insecticide poisioning and unfortunately seen bees die of starvation.
In 2002 it was my dream to one day keep bees for a living. CCD is a major factor in that dream not becoming a reality. I currently make honey based hot sauces, among other spicy things. When we figure out how to control this epidemic I still hope to one day produce all of the honey (which we currently buy from other beekeepers) that we use in our products.
Once again thank you to Serious Eats, The Foodnetwork, Haagen Daz, and all others involved in keeping this in the public eye!
Take Care,
Sam McCanless
Director of Culinary Development
Zane & Zack's World Famous Honey Co.
Sonsofsam at 5:52PM on 03/06/09
Just wanted to echo the comments of several others in this post. Thanks for a video that is very well done! We help small honey producers and bottlers bring their honey to market via the Internet, so we have a vested interest in resolving CCD and obviously they do.
We are fortunate in that so far, CCD has not affected honey bees in the Florida panhandle where the rare Tupelo honey is produced (according to an article from USA today - http://www.armadillopeppers.com/about-honey-bees.html).
The bees and beekeepers play a vital role for us. Thanks to them and again, the team that put this video together.
ArmadilloPepper at 8:21AM on 11/04/09