Want to get started in beekeeping, peruse the wealth of bee-inspired literature, and learn more about pollinators?
Here’s a hand-picked list of our favorite sites. Know of a great pollinator-related resource? Please contact us with your suggestions.
Conservation and Education
Xerces Society. Local organization with a global impact. This is THE conservation nonprofit for invertebrate protection. Great source of scientific information and citizen engagement opportunities.
Pesticide Action Network, North America (PAN). An incredible resource for pesticide activism, including petitions to protect pollinators. “Advancing alternatives to pesticides worldwide.”
Pollinator Partnership. Dedicated to the protection of pollinators and their ecosystems.
Honeybee Haven. Pledge to help honey bees by following four pollinator protection principles.
Pollinator Pathway. Seattle-based project begun in 2008 in response to honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder. Provides a plan for helping pollinators by working to connect patches of public and privately owned land with corridors of much-needed habitat.
Friends of the Bees. “The focus and communication channel for a network of people with a common interest in and enthusiasm for bees.”
Beekeeping
Bee Thinking. Portland supplier of beekeeping supplies, and hub for information on getting started as a keeper of honey bees and mason bees.
Gaia Bees. Natural and holistic apiculture education in the United States and abroad.
Live Honeybees. The inimitable Brian Lacey brings the wonder of honey bees to Portland’s classrooms and backyards.
A.B.C.: Apiaries and Bees for Communities. Canadian urban beekeeping resource.
Natural Beekeeping Forum. Hosted and organized by Friends of the Bees.
Pollinators in Literature
“A Necklace of Bees,” and other poems. Stolen Air: Selected Poems. Osip Mandelstam, translated by Christian Wiman. Ecco Press, 2012.
“The Arrival of the Bee Box,” and other poems. Sylvia Plath. Ariel: The Restored Edition. Harper Perennial, 2005.
“Plath’s Bees.” Marianne Boruch. Poets Teaching Poets. Edited by Gregory Orr. University of Michigan Press, 1996.
The Poetics of the Hive: The Insect Metaphor in Literature. Cristopher Hollingsworth. University of Iowa Press, 2001.
Colony Collapse Disorder: A Media Timeline
“Imagine a World Without Bees.” Time Magazine. August 19, 2013
“Pesticide Issues in the Works: Colony Collapse Disorder.” EPA. May 15, 2012
“What’s behind the problem of disappearing bees?” PBS. July 28, 2011
“Scientists and soldiers solve a bee mystery.” New York Times. October 6, 2010.
“Solving the mystery of the vanishing bees. “ Scientific American. March 2009.
“Last flight of the honeybee?” The Guardian. May 2008.
“CCD: Many Suspects, No Smoking Gun.” Bioscience. May 2008.
“What’s Happening to the Bees?” Christian Science Monitor. April 2007.
“Declining bee population threatens major growers.” All Things Considered, NPR. October 18, 2006.
Pesticides
Are Neonicotinoids Killing Bees? The Xerces Society.
“Science Collapse Disorder: The Real Story Behind Neonics and Mass Bee Deaths.” Forbes. April 11, 2013.
Winged: New Writing on Bees 
I’m am with you all the way! Wait “til you see what I was weaving when the 50,000 bumblebees were killed in Oregon City through wrongful pesticide application.
So, what about photos of beautiful art in your book? Please see doingearthbusinessas.com, Nature Artist page and Present Work gallery: Peace for the Pollinators. I would love to contact you both, Melissa and Jill. I am fully on with pollinator advocacy.
Warmly,
Missy (Melissa) Martin
Thank you, Missy! Your work is beautiful. We’ve chosen to focus on literature in this anthology for a number of reasons, but we’d love to invite visual and textile artists like you to share your work with our audience– on the blog, Facebook page, and potentially at local outreach events. We hope that showcasing honeybee-inspired visual art online will help connect artists and activists, and energize the important work conservation advocates have been doing for a long time now. We’d love to see the blog become a lasting forum for sharing art. Let’s talk!
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I would like to have the book when it comes out . . . I am an avid friend of the bees and working in small ways to save them here in Houston, Texas.
I hope millions of people buy your book with stories of our miraculous bees.
Micki Fine-Pavlicek
Thank you so much, Micki!