If you want to know why our District Governor cares about pollinator habitat restoration, the answer is very simple: over the last 50 years we have already lost 45% of pollinators worldwide! That is a staggering number!We all need to come together to help with pollinator habitat restoration, and our DG not only turned his backyard into a pollinator habitat and Monarch butterfly waystation, but he became a beekeeper himself and created an apiary with two beehives in his yard. The location on the Atlantic coast is not ideal, but the two hives are somewhat shielded behind the house and have been thriving this season.
Today, August 31st, was the first day we harvested honey from the hives. We took only 4 frames - because we want the bees to have enough honey to survive the brutal New England winters - and extracted honey from them, yielding about 17 jars of honey.
Shown in this picture is a jar of honey harvested today, with the pollinator habitat in the background.