Producer

Healthy Bees = Healthy Gardens is a bee-care company located in Eugene, Oregon.

We began our beekeeping program out of a desire to educate our community about the plight of the honeybee, and all pollinators, due to pesticides and other environmental pollution.

We currently are working with the Village School as a school project in addition to our "Host-a-Hive" program.

We knew that in order to become good beekeepers we needed to get educated quickly. Our local Lane County Beekeepers Association (LCBA) was there to help. We started going to the meetings and learning about how to care for our bees. The beekeepers taught us how to take care of our bees, but warned us we would have to replace the comb in the hives after 3 years due to the simple fact pesticides build up in the comb and pollen. The beekeepers were helpless in their battle against pesticides and seemed to accept this fact as part of being a beekeeper. This to us was completely unacceptable.

During the winter of 2011, we spent a lot of time thinking about how we could help not only our own bees but our fellow beekeepers as well. In a moment of divine inspiration, we realized that we could use our bees to protect other bees. It was then that we started the “Host -A – Hive” program using proceeds from the sale of our honey and “bee-friendly” stickers and yardsigns. In this program, we require entire neighborhoods to agree to be bee-friendly before we bring a hive in, educating the community and promoting a commitment to be pesticide-free.