It’s all about the bees, bout the bees, more honey!

What better way to open a blog than with a song, something to make you smile (and potentially give you an ear worm!) before we start telling you about something that is actually quite sad. This is a subject that means a lot to us and is one of the key reasons we spent many years making sure we found the perfect seed card, embedded with the right combination of native wild flowers to create our range of beautiful cards and stationery.

As the title says, this one is all about the bees.

It would be pretty surprising if you hadn’t heard the news over the last few years about the plight of our bees not just in the UK but across the world, but you might not know all of the details – what has happened to our fuzzy friends, and why it matters so much.  

Bees – and their other pollinator friends are amazing because they are responsible for pollinating domestic fruit and vegetables such as broccoli, asparagus, apricots, strawberries, apples and tomatoes… without our buzzy buddies we wouldn’t have any of these lovely foods. In fact, pollinators such as bees are responsible for the largest percentage of pollination and without them the cost of manual pollination would be astronomical for our farmers.

They also keep down the crop pests, like a black and yellow commando team for the fields – without these, farmers would need to use even more pesticides exacerbating the insect population problems even more. And if all that’s not enough, bees produce the gorgeous golden nectar, honey, which is not only a fabulous food stuff that is incredibly energy dense, it is also highly effective for medicinal use and has incredible, natural antibacterial properties.

Over the last generation we have lost over 30% of these stripy superheroes and it’s heart-breaking.  This is due to a lot of factors but the top offenders are:

• The destruction of their habitat due to urban development and a loss of natural grasslands during World War 2 which has left the bees homeless or fighting for territory 
• The use of pesticides and chemicals in controlling crop pests which can affect the bee’s ability to make more bee babies as well as, potentially, killing them outright
• The increase in global warming, changing temperatures and rainfall that has significantly affected the hibernation patterns of these clever creatures

The statistics are quite scary but of the 800 species in Europe: 7 are critically endangered, 46 are endangered, 24 are vulnerable and 101 are near threatened. That’s like losing 1 member of the Bee Gees… Disastrous and you’re really going to notice the difference.

It’s pretty clear that we need to do something to support habitat regrowth and the survival of these amazing insects – and we need to do it now. 

You can see why bees are so important to us here at The Seed Card Company and why we’re so passionate about getting our seed cards off your mantlepiece and into the ground as soon as you’ve finished enjoying them! Every birthday card or thank you note, every wedding invite or Christmas card that you have planted grows into a collection of beautiful wildflowers that will attract bees and other insects that will reproduce, thrive and most importantly they will go on to be pollination powerhouses! Happy bees, happy planet, happy us!

There’s nothing we love more than talking to our wonderful customers. If you’d like a little more information on our eco-friendly greeting cards, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with our friendly team here or alternatively, you can visit our Instagram and say hello!