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It’s Swarm Season: Honey Bees Are House Hunting
City of Mountain Home, ID 22 April 2019—Do you know anyone who called an exterminator when they discovered a swarm of honey bees? If so, that is especially sad because while honey bees are responsible for every third bite of food we consume and they contribute $20 billion to American agriculture each year, as any beekeeper will tell you, they are battling a combination of diseases, parasites, pesticides, habitat loss and malnutrition.
April and May are prime swarm season and it’s a special privilege to witness swarming honey bees.
Mountain Home elected to become a Bee City USA affiliate on March 12, 2018, to raise awareness of how vital pollinators are to life as we know it, and the challenges all pollinators face.
Honey bees function as a superorganism. In other words, a single honey bee cannot survive alone. While there are more than 20,000 species of bees in the world (think bumble, sweat, mason, leafcutter, digger, miner, carpenter, squash, blueberry, sunflower etc.), only seven of those species make honey. North America would not have honey bees today had the European colonists not introduced them in 1622, primarily because they needed wax for candles. They must have felt comfortable together since they were colonists with monarchies, too!
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