Beekeepers to Residents: Don’t Kill the Bees!

Beekeepers in South Carolina are asking for some cooperation from residents. As bee season kicks into high gear, they are begging residents to leave the bees alone. Call for help if you must, but do not kill off the local bee population.

Big Problems

Most people do not realize how vital bees are to the agricultural business. Without bees, there are hundreds of fruits, vegetables, and plants that would simply disappear. Tim Dover, who works at The Carolina Honey Bee Company, stated, “It’s something that we need to pay attention to. It’s like the canary in the coal mine. If the honey bee’s go, we’re going to have an issue.”

He further stated, “In fact, if we didn’t have honey bees, things that you wouldn’t expect would be a lot more expensive and rare. Things like beef, without honey bees, we need honey bees to pollinate the alfalfa for the food lots.”

Not Naturally Aggressive

Something most people do not realize is that bees really do not want to confront you. They get aggressive when they are attacked but are otherwise very docile. Even though they are buzzing around, in most cases, as long as you remain calm, you won’t have a problem. You surely do not need to be afraid of them if you are in your car or home.

Today, local beekeepers will set up hotlines to call in case of a swarm spotting. Rather than killing them off, the beekeepers come out and capture the bees alive. This serves two purposes: you get rid of the bees and they get to up their supply without paying any money. In fact, Dover offers this very service in South Carolina.

The bottom line here is that we need bees, but most Americans are simply uninformed about bee activity and how to react to bees. We are programmed as children to fear these tiny little creatures and keep that fear alive as we grow older. It is extremely important to get this information out to people so they know how to properly respond to heightened bee activity in the area.

As bee populations continue to dwindle here in the United States and abroad, we simply cannot afford for massive swarms to be wiped out. The damage to the local agriculture scene could be monstrous. So, as we stated, don’t panic, don’t spray, just call up a local beekeeper!