For too long, sustainability and profit have been treated as opposites.

One was about doing good, the other about doing well. But the businesses that will define the next decade are the ones that understand the two are now inseparable.

Sustainability is not a cost. It is a new way to make money.

At HiveKeepers, we stopped asking how to make beekeeping more sustainable and started asking how sustainability could make it more profitable. That shift led to the Micro Honey Harvester, a world-first modular system that lets anyone, anywhere, harvest pure honey without the complexity, cost or waste of traditional extraction.

Traditional honey extraction is messy, expensive and inaccessible for most people who care about sustainable food production. Large rooms, heavy machinery and dedicated facilities all create barriers for smaller producers trying to operate profitably.

The Micro Honey Harvester removes those barriers entirely. Designed with precision and intention, it eliminates the need for an extraction room. With a simple push of a button, beekeepers can harvest fresh honey from hive to home in minutes with zero mess. The result is less waste, higher yield, lower setup costs and a cleaner product ready for sale.

And here’s the part businesses rarely acknowledge: it can make you money.

Whether you are a commercial grower, hobbyist beekeeper or retail equipment supplier, this system opens a new income stream with minimal environmental impact.

For the first time, sustainability is no longer only an ethical choice. It is a financial strategy.

Consumers today expect transparency and traceability from the businesses they support. They want to know their purchases make a difference. By integrating sustainable systems like the Micro Honey Harvester, businesses don’t just meet this expectation, they exceed it. They attract new customers, command stronger margins and tell a genuine story that resonates with modern buyers.

HiveKeepers is already proving this model works. Our technology has been recognised globally, winning both an Apimondia Gold Innovation Award and an Australian Good Design Award. These accolades represent more than engineering excellence. They signal a vision for how design, purpose and profitability can coexist.

As Founder Simon Mildren puts it, “We didn’t want to make another product. We wanted to redesign an entire process and make it profitable for everyone involved, from the beekeeper to the planet.”

The Micro Honey Harvester reflects a shift in mindset. It shows what happens when sustainability sits at the centre of design, not the edge. Every element was created to reduce waste, save energy and simplify the harvesting process without compromising quality. The result is a product that benefits both the environment and the economy. It empowers individuals and businesses to take part in regenerative production, turning sustainability into something tangible and rewarding.

This is also a glimpse into the future of food production. Local, traceable, small-scale and connected. Just as microbreweries redefined beer, micro-harvesting is redefining honey.

Distributed production strengthens resilience and creates a closer relationship between the producer, the consumer and the land. It shortens supply chains, reduces waste and builds a more transparent and trustworthy marketplace.

HiveKeepers is part of a growing movement proving that innovation and sustainability are not competing goals, they are the same goal. The companies that understand this will lead the next wave of growth.

The Micro Honey Harvester is not just for beekeepers. It is for innovators, growers and entrepreneurs who see that doing better for the planet and doing better for their business are now one and the same.

This is not a trend. It is the future. Sustainability is the way forward, and it is the way to make money moving forward.

Simon Mildren, HiveKeepers: team@hivekeepers.com

The post Sustainability That Sells: How Profit and Purpose Come Together in the Hive appeared first on Green Prophet.

Loads of vitamin supplements, including leading American supplement company SmartyPants founded by Courtney Nicols who we interviewed for Charity:Water uses sugar as a sweetener. A new invention from gummy supplement manufacturer TopGum Industries, has created HoneyGum, a line of all-natural, honey-based functional gummies. The new product joins the company’s rapidly expanding portfolio of advanced dietary supplement gummies.

What makes this gummy unique is TopGum’s utilization of pure, high-dose liquid honey as opposed to commonly used powdered honey. Harnessing the ancient wellness benefits of pure liquid honey, HoneyGum seamlessly blends one of nature’s finest ingredients into its advanced gummy formulation technology.

The company will introduce the new line, alongside its innovative Caffeine Gummicino, IronGum, and others at SupplySide West, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, on Oct 30 to 31. 

Honey is enjoying a revival among consumers. According to CNBC Honey is a key trending flavor in multiple food and beverage products. People everywhere including me are raising honey bees at home to access pure, local honey. Much of the honey you find in supermarkets will be adulterated: the bees fed with sugar, pesticides and the honey boiled as a form of pasteurisation. Read here about the benefits of raw honey. And here to know if your honey is real or fake. 

TopGum creates nutraceuticals in these health categories:

• Honey Sleep Relaxation: Features honey (500mg) with chamomile extract, GABA, L-theanine, and valerian in a calming, lemon-chamomile flavor, designed to help promote restful sleep.
• Honey Immune: This gummy is enhanced with 500mg honey, elderberry, vitamin D (1000IU) and other vitamins in a vibrant mixed-berry flavor.
• Honey Immune Ginger: Combines ginger, propolis, and honey (500mg) in a refreshing apple flavor.
• Honey Energy: Delivers 500mg honey-infused energy via B-vitamins and caffeine in a bright tangerine flavor.
• High-Dose Honey: Offers the highest amount of honey in a single gummy, enriched with biotin for beauty-from-within, and comes in a natural, light brown hue.

You can theoretically skip the product and just make these honeys at home. Functional foods and neutraceuticals are also found in the CBD market in the US where Walmart is adding CBD to coffee products. As my old fashioned GP used to say: if you eat a healthy diet there is no need for vitamins.

But biohackers disagree and new research suggests that certain supplements such amino acids may prolong life.

Still people want promise and vitamins may be the way to help achieve mental and physical health on top of eating a balanced diet, preferably the Mediterranean Diet.

“Combining liquid honey into a stable gummy matrix in a way that hits the right texture and flavor notes is a complex process,” explains Jennifer Toomey, Head of New Product Development, US, for TopGum. “But it was important for us to showcase the benefits of honey without the unnecessary additives that can come with a dry or powdered ingredient.

“The new line of honey-based functional gummies is designed to meet the diverse needs of consumers in their active lifestyles,” asserts Eyal Shohat, CEO of TopGum. “Each HoneyGum product is carefully crafted to deliver a holistic, wellness solution in a deliciously chewy and convenient format. This new gummy series is a prime example of how TopGum can innovate a full line of products responding to consumer demands for functional supplements that can deliver a flavorful and enjoyable experience.” 

The HoneyGums were created using TopGum’s  technology for combining pure liquid honey with the company’s fiber-based prebiotic gummy matrix. This process leverages the natural sweetness and prebiotic benefits of fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) with the natural goodness, signature flavor and sweetness of honey. The gummies come in a unique, hexagonal shape, as inspired by natural honeycombs, for tactile and visual appeal.

The post Honey gummies from the Land of Milk and Honey appeared first on Green Prophet.

Beekeepers are setting up hives in a neighborhood near you, but most will just be part of the conventional system which use the same tools that may have contributed to the decline of bees in the first place. Biodynamic beekeepers are different, using a more nature-centered approach: they oppose moving hives for pollination, mass harvesting honey, and killing and replacing the queen every year. They open the hive when the moon is right, and use natural medicine like chamomile tea to treat the hives.

I first learned about biodynamic beekeeping in Israel from Yossi Oud, who studied the Rudolf Steiner methods of beekeeping via German colleagues.

With 24,000 species of bees in the world, Israel is home to about 1,300 species, compared to a total of 600 species in a country as large as Canada, says Oud, an Israeli beekeeper and teacher who works with biodynamic beekeeping methods. He says Israel is unusually rich in bee species, and this is due in part to the country’s plant diversity. I took a course with him and visited his biodynamic hives on the roof of Tel Aviv’s mall, Dizengoff Center, and at his bee farm outside Jerusalem.

Read more: Palestinian women make beekeeping sweeter

As we learn more about sustainable methods such as regenerative farming and agriculture hopefully beekeeping will meet somewhere in the middle.

The Land of Milk and Honeybees

“Israel is the land of milk and honeybees, and a special area and hotspot for animals, plants and bees,” says Oud. “Of the 1,300 species of bees in Israel, 8 of them are social bees,” he tells Green Prophet.

The local bee for the most part, which is the Syrian bee, is extinct, he notes. This is an aggressive bee which has been replaced by an imported Italian bee which is now common in wild hives, urban hives and in commercial hives. The Italian bees were brought to Israel in the 1930s to support the vineyards, he says.

Because there is such a wide diversity of plants in Israel, he stresses, this is reflected by the large range of bee species. It all goes together.

What makes the honey bee different from other bees is the honey stomach which creates honey and which is also 95% of their diet, says Oud, noting that people and honeybees have had a strong connection for thousands of years as seen in cave art in France that depicts a kind of bee agriculture. Bees were also domesticated in ancient Egypt.

Honey is a magical elixir. Mystical even. And our love for it goes way back to the earliest signs of advanced civilization, he notes.

Bees and Islam

ystically, all major world religions have a connection to bees, and Islam is no exception: “In the Quran, Chapter 16 is named after the bees” says Oud who is Jewish but who works with Muslim and Christian Palestinians to help them learn the trade of beekeeping in a project called Bees for Peace.

Why is there an entire chapter on the bees in the Quran, The Bee?

Within the chapter, two verses cover the essence of the honeybee:

And your Lord inspired the bee: build homes in mountains and trees, and in (the hives) they build for you.

Then eat from all the fruits, following the design of your Lord, precisely.

The Bee (Arabic: النحل; an-nahl) is the 16th chapter (sūrah) of the Qur’an with 128 verses. It is named after the honey bees mentioned in verse 68, and contains a comparison of the industry and adaptability of honey bees with the industry of man.

An-Nahl, Chapter 16 (verses 68 to 69) talks about a variety of topics, but Allah, according to Muslims, specifically chose the title The Bee to catch the attention of the readers. Bees are said to be Allah’s miracles; the way they function and how they behave, are to be held as an example.

According to some Islamic traditions, everyone needs a sheep and bees to ensure prosperity for the coming year.

In Judaism, the bee is not kosher but you can eat its honey, which is a rare ruling as you can’t drink milk from a non-kosher animal such as a camel. Deborah (Dvora in Hebrew), who was a prophet, is also associated with bees. Dvora means bee in Hebrew.

In the Bible, honey is mentioned 61 times and its meaning is often linked with prosperity and abundance. In the third chapter of Exodus, when God called Moses to lead the slaves out of Egypt, he called him to lead them to a land that will flow with milk and honey. This is the land of modern day Israel.

In the Song of Songs of the Old Testament (4:11-16): “Your lips, my beloved and (promised) bride, drip honey as the honeycomb; Honey and milk are under your tongue, And the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon.”

Honey is a ritual food eaten during the Hebrew holiday called Rosh Hashanah, which celebrates the Jewish New Year. “May you have a sweet year,” is a common blessing as people eat apples dipped in honey.

What is biodynamic beekeeping?

To further the understanding of biodynamic beekeeping, we are to view the colony as one creature, explains Oud. What does the hive know? For most of us it’s a mystery but we do know that each worker female lives about 6 weeks, there is one queen and a small percentage of male drones.

The biodynamic queen lives for 6 or 7 years, and the worker bee has about 16 jobs, among which is making propolis, the immune system of the hive, which is collected from tree resin, says Oud.

The job of the male drones? While they might look like loafers who can’t even feed themselves, male bees bring genetic diversity from one hive to another on their travels,, says Oud. They mate with the the new emergent queen once a year in the spring when she flies out of the hive, and the rest of the colony follows her in a swarm to establish a new colony.. And that is how bees give birth, according to biodynamic beekeeping. The old queen stays in the hive and raises her new brood after the rest have left.

Related: What is apitherapy that uses the stings of the bees?

Bees for Peace

Bees give so much sweetness in life and health as well, but they can be credited for bringing people together in the Middle East when politicians fail. Oud has started a number of educational programs in Israel including Bees for Peace where he teaches Muslim woman how to be urban beekeepers. is your honey real or fake? “When people learn to work for the bees’ welfare, much sensitivity and gentleness is developed, and that could translate into our daily life. In this way the bees teach us to act for society, to live in co-existence, let go of stigmas, and help us get closer to ourselves, others, the land and the world,” says Oud.

Oud started Bees for Peace to join hearts and create cooperation between Christians, Muslims and Jews, Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians. The initiative helps build bridges through the bio-dynamic bee keeping method in multiple constellations – amongst kids in schools, through courses and activities for adults coming from different sectors and cultures and in diverse joint initiatives.

Biodynamic is a term developed inside the teachings of anthroposophy, developed by the spiritualist and educator Rudolph Steiner from Austria in the early 1900s. There is dozens of Steiner schools in Israel, also known as Waldorf Schools, and Oud comes from that education system as an educator and teacher. There is even a biodynamic farm in Egypt called Sekem.

Bees for Peace emphasizes empowerment of women from “traditional houses” (whether Muslim, religious Jewish or other disempowered populations), who usually don’t go out of the house to work. They learn the art of beekeeping on their rooftop or from their garden and can make a small income from honey, beauty products, or other products derived from the wax of the hive.

The conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah group in Lebanon has made it difficult for women in northern communities to tend their hives. Many hives have died says Oud, and I spoke with one Muslim woman who says she misses her hives like her family. She was staying at a hotel in Nazareth, unable to live in her village in the north as its constantly being bombarded by missiles.

The Marj Ibn Amer Almond project in the Jezreel Valley trained Israeli and Palestinian women to grow bees by the biodynamic method, in order to increase the number of bee hives in the area, to enhance the women’s involvement in the almond agriculture and to increase the almond yield, especially in light of the decreasing numbers of bees in the area and in the world.

The project was carried out by the El-Hukayer organization, an NGO dedicated to socio-economic development within Palestinian society in Israel.

Tlmei Achva is an educational agricultural farm in the city of Lod, for Muslim-Jewish kids and teenagers, secular and religious, where they work and grow bees together.

There is an urban beekeeping farming project in the city center of Jerusalem.

There is a biodynamic beekeeping course at Ecome center and in the city of Jericho, West Bank. The NGO works to empower Ethiopian women through growing bees and building traditional Ethiopian bee hives.

The Honey Women of East Jerusalem is a project in collaboration with the Sinsila Center and the Mosella Association.

Have a swarm? Call SOS for the Bees. Locals who find a swarm or an unwanted hive should not use poison to kill them.

SOS for the Bees is a volunteer-run group that collects swarms and re-homes hives. In Hebrew, it is Magen D’vorim Adom. You can call Yossi Oud and his team of volunteers will run to collect the bees.

::Bees for Peace

Sweet and Healing, Here’s More Honey news on Green Prophet:

Raw honey from Yemen

Tej, Ethiopian Honey Beer Recipe

Green Prophet Visits Apiary – And Gets Swarmed

Australian Eucalyptus Trees Keep Honey Bees Buzzing Year-Round

Bee Stings Are Sweet in Israel

Beelogics to save the world from bee colony collapse disorder

Organic Honey or Mass-Produced?

Can Urban Beekeepers Prevent Colony Collapse?

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With the proliferation of urban beekeepers I asked myself: Is it safe to eat beeswax from the honeycomb? I told some friends I had a hive and several of them asked specifically for the honeycomb with living, raw honey in it. Commercial honey, we know is pasteurized, so the healing enzymes in honey are killed. But honeycomb is “just wax” I thought. Won’t it get stuck in my intestines or merge with my teeth? Surely they just mean to chew on it like bubblegum?

But, no. Several people I spoke with said that honeycomb is good for you and it’s sought out as a natural medicine. Beekeeping expert, Yossi Oud, from Bees for Peace, Israel told me that beeswax is good for your teeth and your throat and you should it with natural honey. Scientific studies (linked below) confirm this.

For centuries, bee-derived products such as propolis, honey and beeswax from the honeycomb have been used as natural therapies in folk medicine due to their properties and their high content of bioactive compounds. Today, there is renewed interest in apitherapy due to its preventing and healing properties for wounds, rheumatism, and gastrointestinal disorders.

Is there any scientific research out there to support any of these heath claims? In a recent study from Egypt published in Veterinarian Medicine sheep were fed beeswax as part of their diet and the results were impressive and included  reduced carbon emissions and better health outcomes for the animals:

The researchers write that beeswax inclusion in the feed formulation is good for sustainable farming. Beeswax in feed “enhanced the nutrient digestibility by enhancing rumen fermentation and decreasing the ammonia emissions,” they wrote.

Feeding farm animals beeswax is regenerative farming

The use of 4 g/day of beeswax supplementation in growing Assaf lambs could promote zootechnical performance, nutrient digestibility, rumen fermentation and thus lower the cost of feed formulation and support the sustainability of lamb farming.

In this study researchers investigated pesticide residues in honey and beeswax.  As bees forage miles away from the hive, it is hard to create 100% ecological honey unless you live in a forest with a large organic buffer.

The scientists concluded in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry that “the food consumption of honey and beeswax contaminated with these residues considered separately does not compromise the consumer’s health, provided proposed action limits are met. In regard to residues of flumethrin in honey and in beeswax, “zero tolerance” should be applied.”

How can consumers check for contamination? How can you know flumethrin wasn’t used?

Flumethrin is a pyrethroid insecticide. It is used externally in veterinary medicine against parasitic insects and ticks on cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and dogs, and against the treatment of parasitic mites in honeybee colonies. It is commonly used to treat varoa mites.

According to Merck who makes the product, flumethrin is toxic to organs, should not contact your skin, eyes, or be breathed. It may damage an unborn child. According to the Government of Canada, this material isn’t a danger to health if used correctly. But how many beekeepers might make a mistake and contaminate a hive and all the honey with the material?

What does it do to the fitness of the hive?

Whenever we ask a question, we find so many more questions waiting to be solved.

If your honey is organic, you might be spared from potential toxins. You can treat mites with natural formulations from chamomile tea, salt and honey, to dusting with organic demerrara sugar and using oxalic acid vapors.

Eat beeswax with honey and olive oil

Some studies suggest that beeswax might help lower cholesterol levels, it may prevent infections, and help protect the stomach from ulcers caused by non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

This review of existing studies on eating beeswax or honeycomb showed an antimicrobic effect of beeswax against Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella enterica, Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger: “these inhibitory effects are enhanced synergistically with other natural products such as honey or olive oil.”

Beeswax can be used for a variety of other natural uses. I made sunscreen using beeswax honeycomb and tea. You can cut it with a seed oil that’s low on flavor and use it as a wood polish. It’s great for kitchen tables that get a lot of wear and tear. And you can make natural candles from beeswax. Most candles you buy today are parafin and derivatives of fossil fuels. Better to have some natural wax in your life.

So what are you waiting for? Miriam visited a beehive and got swarmed. I started a beehive and it’s been an ever-ending discovery into nature, the environment, and to myself.

And yes, the honey test works. Want to know if your honey is real or fake? Try this test.

Want to try to eat other non-organic food to see if it helps your health? Have you tried charcoal in your ice-cream or diatomaceous earth?

The post Is eating honeycomb good for you? appeared first on Green Prophet.

A green roof is a beautiful idea for cities. They feel good, look good, they clean the air and reduce temperatures inside in the summer, increase them in the winter. They are good for the birds and the bees. But green roofs are cut off from the great web of information and possibilities found in soil attached to the earth. Scientists have a new idea: Mycorrhizal fungi.

In the US green roofs are typically planted with non-native plants in sterile soils, and their effectiveness declines over time. A Dartmouth-led research team set out to determine if managing green roof soil microbes could boost healthy urban soil development, a methodology that could be applied to support climate resilience in cities.

The team created an experimental green roof in Chicago to test how enhancing soil with native prairie microbes would change the soil microbial community over time. They were particularly interested in tracking the presence of beneficial mycorrhizal fungi.

Mycorrhizal fungi are well-known to live in roots and support plants in a symbiotic underground relationship, delivering nutrients and water to them in exchange for plant sugars. Mycorrhizal fungi could be particularly helpful to plants in green roofs that have to endure high temperatures, intense sun, and periodic flooding.

The researchers added soil rich with native mycorrhizal fungi obtained from a local restored prairie, referred to as “inoculum,” to the experimental green roof’s soil. They planted inoculated and untreated soil with native prairie plants and green roof succulents. Over two years, the team tracked changes in the mycorrhizal fungal community of the green roof. They also compared the green roof fungal species identified to those present in the inoculum and in the air.

Their findings demonstrate that active management of green roof mycorrhizal fungi accelerates soil development faster than if mycorrhizal fungal communities are left to passively reestablish on their own. Green roofs treated with mycorrhizal fungi foster a more diverse soil community that is more likely to support long-term green roof sustainability, according to the results published in New Phytologist.

“In this urban rooftop setting, we saw more diversity in the fungal communities of the inoculated soil,” said lead author Paul Metzler, soil ecology lab manager in the Department of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth. “The long-term and consistent effects of the inoculum were quite surprising, as it’s not necessarily something you would expect when working with such small microorganisms.”

Using a molecular technique called “DNA metabarcoding,” which enables the identification of multiple organisms in one sample, the researchers could identify fungi present in the green roof soils as well as potential sources of these fungi. Many fungi came from the inoculum while other species got there through some other vector such as wind.

The co-authors state that their study was different than most of its kind, as few studies track mycorrhizal community shifts over time post-inoculation and even fewer attempt to track the sources of species pools. The team also had a number of species in their green roof that likely arrived via unmeasured vectors such birds, insects, or even rats.

Still, the most diverse fungal communities were those that had been treated with the inoculum, illustrating how mycorrhizal fungi could be used to improve soil health in green roofs. The results suggest that active management of soil microbial communities is effective and worth the effort and resources in cities.

“Green roofs have a shelf life and they’re not always the self-sustaining ecosystems that we think they are,” says senior author Bala Chaudhary, an associate professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth. “They can be beneficial to urban areas but tend to lose their efficacy over time.”

While green roofs are marketed as “set it and forget it,” the co-authors explain that ecological thought should be incorporated into their design, construction, and maintenance to maximize the benefits and role that green roofs play in the climate resilience of urban areas.

“Our cities could be a window into the future,” says Chaudhary. “They are experiencing the impacts of climate change—warming temperatures and increased drought and flooding—in an intensified way, which make them a great microcosm to study some of these impacts below ground.”

The post Adding Mycorrhizal fungi to green roofs appeared first on Green Prophet.

Pollination is big business in the United States. Pollination from bees, beetles, flies and birds makes sure that olive trees and agriculture crops such as strawberries and almonds will grow. In fact 75% of all pollination comes from bees. But about 40% of managed honey bee colonies in the US were lost between 2021 to 2022, a problem for farms and farmers.

Part of the reason the bees are being lost –– or colonies dying –– I am acutely aware, is because of the conventional farming system that creates monoculture crops and which uses pesticides. However, beekeeping for honey and as a pollinator service is big business in the United States, expected to grow to about $700 million USD by 2027.

A startup from Israel called BeeHero, based now in California with an R&D office in Tel Aviv, is using sensors and data to help conventional beekeepers maintain healthy hives. A sensor in the hive that monitors conditions paired with data inputs from research and a sharing app helps commercial beekeepers keep track of their hives in the field, real time.

In 2022 BeeHero had already raised $42 million USD. This year they are voted one of 100 companies of the year by the CleanTech Group. The Cleantech Group totaled 25,435 nominations from over 65 countries to offers a fair representation of global innovation and private company creation.

Beeher’s latest $42M Series B funding round led by Convent Capital was joined by General Mills, Cibus Capital (formerly ADM Capital), Rabobank, MS&AD, Firstime, J-Ventures, Plug&Play, iAngels, Gaingels, UpWest, and more. By that point they had raised $64M.

BeeHero creates what they call a Healthy Hive Score, a metric for measuring bee health that promotes bee welfare management. Their beehive sensors collectively saved a quarter of a billion bees this past year, according to their data, and beekeepers using BeeHero’s technology have reported 33% fewer colony losses compared to the US national average.

As the human population continues to rise, growers are faced with the challenge of producing more food with fewer resources. Bee pollination is indispensable to this production of the world’s most valuable and nutritious foods, providing $18 billion annually in value to US agricultural crops alone.

BeeHero currently runs the largest database of bee behavior in existence, according to the company. They have amassed  data from hundreds of thousands of monitored colonies, and existing academic research, to give beekeepers a way to assess colony health based on colony growth, brood health, and queen presence, normalized against weather conditions and flight hours.

For growers, they can decide where and when to place bees for better pollination rates: “While beekeepers and growers depend upon strong and healthy hives, they have long struggled to accurately see inside their hives to better understand and care for their colonies, leaving both their crop yields and bottom lines at risk,” says Omer Davidi, the CEO of BeeHero. This is especially true in the United States and Canada where a significant number of colonies do not withstand winter. Other stressors include disease and climate change.

We wrote about the problems with almonds and almond milk here. And our demanding almond milk is also part of the problem. California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds. In 2019, that amounted to 2.5 billion pounds of the nuts. And the demand rises, with companies especially eyeing the growing Chinese market. California farmers have ripped out citrus trees and planted almond groves that cover over 1000,000 acres – an area comparable to the size of Delaware.

While Americans eat plenty of almonds – an estimated 900 grams every year – it’s the demand for almond milk that’s driving the industry.  At sales of $1.2 billion yearly, hugely topping other non-dairy milks, it’s easy to see why.

The catch is that almond farmers can’t rely on native bees to pollinate their orchards. There aren’t enough of them, and they can’t be counted on to pollinate a predictable number of trees. The farmers contract commercial beekeepers to transport their hives to the orchards while the trees blossom. 1.6 million hives are needed to make USA almond trees produce every spring – over ten times what other crops, like apples, demand.

And this is where BeeHero hopes to fit into the market.

The first application of BeeHero’s Healthy Hive Score was during the 2023 almond pollination season in California. Growers received scores based on analysis of each of the orchards pollinated by hives under BeeHero management. Based on the average outcome of almonds per acre, growers that worked with BeeHero during this season collectively produced about 270 million pounds of almonds all grown under bee-friendly conditions.

The post Israel’s BeeHero a top 100 cleantech company appeared first on Green Prophet.

Pollinators are less likely to land on flowers sprayed with fertilisers or pesticides as they can detect electric field changes around the flower, researchers have recently discovered. While science has proven that pesticides are toxic, they know little about how they affect the immediate interaction between plants and pollinators. A new study sheds light on how chemicals immediately alter feeding action of pollinators. 

A study, published in PNAS Nexus, shows that chemical sprays alter the electric field around flowers for up to 25 minutes after exposure. This impact lasts substantially longer than natural fluctuations, such as those caused by wind, and causes a reduction in bee feeding effort in nature. That means, this is a sound argument for the immediate and direct effects of pesticides on pollinators. 

Ellard Hunting at the University of Bristol and his team noted that fertilisers did not affect the vision and smell of the bees, and set out to mimic the electrical changes caused by fertilisers and pesticides in the field by electrically manipulating flowers. This showed that bumblebees were able to detect and discriminate against the small and dynamic electric field alterations that are caused by the chemicals.

Hunting said: “We know that chemicals are toxic, but we know little about how they affect the immediate interaction between plants and pollinators. Flowers have a range of cues that attract bees to promote feeding and pollination. For instance, bees use cues like flower odour and colour, but they also use electric fields to identify plants.

“A big issue is thus – agrochemical application can distort floral cues and modify behaviour in pollinators like bees.”

Other airborne materials that affect bees and other pollinators

Various other airborne particles such as nanoparticles, car and factory exhaust, nano-plastics, and viral particles may have similar impacts, affecting a wide array of organisms that use the electric fields that are virtually everywhere in the environment.

Co-author, Bristol’s Sam England, explained: “What makes this study important is that it’s the first known example of anthropogenic ‘noise’  interfering with a terrestrial animal’s electrical sense.

”It’s much like motorboat noise that hinders the ability of fish to detect their predators, or artificial light at night that confuses moths; the fertilisers are a source of noise to bees trying to detect floral electrical cues.

“This widens our understanding of the multifaceted ways in which human activity is negatively impacting the natural world, which can seem quite depressing, but it will hopefully allow is to introduce or invent solutions to prevent the adverse effects that these chemicals may be having on bees.”

Want to do more for the bees and other pollinators? A home garden can help the bees. Read here.

The post Bees are turned off by pesticides at first glance appeared first on Green Prophet.

Bees. We know we need them for pollinating the food we eat – like almonds from California. Their stings may have medicinal properties, and to check we’ve even sent one of writers on a beekeeping mission where she got swarmed.

Besides their delicious honey, bees in all forms are an essential part of the web of life. While vegans don’t eat honey, and some we know like PieBird in Canada are working to liberate bee hives from human needs –– we like to support small, local beekeepers that help honey businesses and honeybees thrive. 

In 2012, we uncovered the people at Balyolu, working to train women in Turkey the art and craft of beekeeping so they could make a sustainable living. Part of the model that the American founder of Balyolu created was an eco-tourism aspect.

Instead of selling tourists carpets which Turkish men will do shamelessly, Balyolu had a mission to help tourists explore the rugged, pure nature of Turkey on a honey tasting tour. Taste the land through the honey. What could be better than that?

Well in the Bronx, honeybee keepers have tasted notes of pollution. In Jerusalem will the sweet bees offer a taste of holiness?

A new project in East Jerusalem is taking up a form of the Balyolu dream, no longer operating, by training Palestinian women without professions and teaching them how to be professional beekeepers. Muslims support the idea. Remember in 2012 when we interview the men who are beekeeping at mosques in England?

Fast forward and meet Dallal Nsardin Qassem, 52, a mother of five and grandmother of seven who – reports a local newspaper – learned the art of beekeeping three years ago while taking a course at the Sinsila Center, located on the rooftop terraces of East Jerusalem’s Central Library.

The center is a project of the Muslala non-profit which runs social and art projects in Jerusalem.

“Bees are blessed and there is a story about them in the Koran where it says: ‘The honeybee holds in its belly a liquid that is a medicine for mankind,’” she says. “I have learned to get close to the bees and to stop being afraid of them. I learned how bees work together, as a single entity, and we humans can learn a lot from them – how to conduct ourselves and behave in the best way.”

She noted that her husband was against the idea at first and her kids were afraid of the bees, but now everyone is onboard and she is teaching others how to tend to the hives, while earning an income. Her husband even collects honey from the hives.

It is not common for traditional Muslim women to work outside the home. So a profession that can be built at home on a rooftop is ideal. 

Tareq Nasser started the idea of Sinsila when he saw the success of the green roof created by Muslala on the roof of the Clal Center in West Jerusalem. This center which even rents tents like an AirBNB, offers an urban green space in the middle of downtown. It’s blessed by activists, artists, environmentalists and educators. 

Nasser told Haaretz: “This project is really changing these women! And I’m not talking about the elites – most of the women here don’t speak Hebrew or English, most don’t have jobs.

“Now they have a profession, they have a green terrace of their own on their roof. Of the women who participated in the pilot, three have been accepted to teach sustainability at a local school. Can you imagine how that changes the life of a 55-year-old woman who never had a job or completed a degree?”

Bees work with the police in Italy

In Italy, bees are working with the police: City bees in Italy are helping the police fight pollution.

While Italy’s Carabinieri is famous for fighting the country’s toughest criminals, a special unit charged with protecting forests and the environment, is now taking on a totally different kind of organised group. Since 2018 the rooftop of the force’s headquarters in central Rome has been home to beehives. 

“One of the main duties of Italy’s Carabinieri police force is to monitor the environment but here we’re using bees in a new way, as biodiversity indicators. They monitor an area that’s 1.5 to 2 km in size. That helps us to gather useful information, which isn’t normally available, about the atmospheric pollutants that might be present in urban areas, such as dioxins and other substances,” explained Giancarlo Papitto, from the Carabinieri’s Forestry and Environment Unit Command.

Cities are rich in biodiversity. Especially Levantine and Mediterranean ones where planter boxes can sit outside year round. Of course you can take plants like olives and plant them in potters (read here on how to grow an olive tree in a container), but in the Med region it’s just natural to plant and pot everything without the worry of frost. And now with the planters and urban trees growing around us, it’s time to start collecting honey. 

In 2017, I visited the Crawford Hotel in downtown Denver where I learned about beekeeping. It makes sense that the urban trend found in United States, Canada and all over Europe has made it to the Middle East. And even if you don’t keep the bees yourselves – they can keep themselves in nature with a little help. Plant an urban garden to help them out. 

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We only get one Earth, so we should do the most we can in order to preserve it. That being said, many people still do not take the environment as seriously as they should. Some do not care, and others are unconcerned about its lasting effects, while there are those that wouldn’t mind doing something about it, but simply cannot be bothered as it disrupts their way of life. However, there are several small things that people can do to help the environment that prove to be little to no inconvenience.

Power Down

How many lights are on in your house right now? Now how many of those lights are being used? What about TVs or game consoles? You don’t have to live in a cave, but don’t make a habit of leaving lights on throughout the house when nobody is in the room. A simple flip of the switch on your way out is all it takes, and not only will you be saving electricity, but your bill will start to go down too! Many marketing companies, such as Helixa, are attempting to tap into the Generation Z youth in order to promote products that are both environmentally friendly and innovative. Items that reduce energy expenditure or contain eco-friendly and energy-saving modes are being used in more and more technology every day.

Turn Off the Faucet

Think about your morning routine for a moment. When you brush your teeth, do you leave the faucet on the entire time? While this might not seem like a big deal, the amount of water that is wasted twice a day, every day for a year, really adds up. Now think about if everyone did this and how much water is simply flowing down the drain. Try to make a habit of turning the sink off after you wet your toothbrush, and only turn it on again when you are finished. This is a convenient way to save water because it only takes a literal second of your time. The same could be said when you are washing dishes, or warming up the shower, which is fine as long as you don’t leave it running for minutes before you hop in. After doing a combination of these water-saving techniques, you’ll be surprised how much money you save at the end of the year on your water bill.

Reduce Waste

You’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and for good reason. If everyone did this, our planet would be in a much better state than it is right now, and it doesn’t even have to be inconvenient, either! Simply being self-aware about the number of resources you use in your everyday life can make it a natural part of your day, rather than a chore. Counting the squares of toilet paper you use rather than gathering a pointless wad, reusing plastic bags from the store or taking your own reusable ones, and purchasing paper or metal straws are all ways to reduce used resources. If you go out to eat, tell your waiter you don’t need a straw if you don’t intend to use one, otherwise, health codes require that they throw the unopened straw away regardless of if it was used or not. When you have recyclable materials it’s a good rule of thumb to do so.

Closing Thoughts

We all have to do our part in saving the planet, and if we do it right, we might even be able to save a dollar or two along the way. If turning off our faucets while we brush our teeth or flipping off the lights when we’re not using them is too much to ask, there isn’t much hope for the future. But there are still those that care and want to make a difference, and more and more of those people are influencing the people around them every day. With any luck, we may just stay on this beautiful blue orb a little longer.

The post Effortless Ways to Help the Environment and Save Money in the Process appeared first on Green Prophet.