The Importance of Bees.

We wouldn't be here if it weren't for the bees. Human history has been inextricably linked with bees, especially honey bees, which are the main pollinators of crops around the world. 

In the Cevennes region of France, beekeepers keep honey bees in hollowed tree logs where they are content and produce some of the most delicious, all-natural honey in the world. This old art of bee-keeping has been in use for centuries and is a viable way of respecting the bees' natural habitat while they thrive.

In parts around the world, including the Ural mountains in Russia, there is a sense of allowing the bees to live undisturbed among us, providing optimal living quarters where they can do the important work of pollinating plants.

A world without bees is unfathomable. Since flower- producing plants appeared about 125 million years ago, bees and flowers have been inseparable. In fact, one of the prevailing theories is that flowers provide the stunning array of colors and nuances to attract bees, whose vision includes many more colors than we humans can register.

Entire bee colonies succumbed to colony collapse from 2017-2018. Bees are disappearing at an alarming rate. The good news is, more people are realizing bees are critical to our survival as a species and are working to keep bees and plant flowers which attract them.

Let's keep the bee front and center, where it belongs, as this painting reminds us.