Feed a Bee is a major initiative to increase food for honey bees and other pollinators, including growing 50 million flowers and providing additional forage acreage. By collaborating with organizations and individuals throughout the United States, Feed a Bee will help to provide pollinators with the food they need not only to survive, but also to thrive.

Why Feed A Bee?
One-third of all crops rely to some extent on pollination by insects. But bees need to eat too. Reduced habitat has decreased food options for bees at a time when agriculture and apiculture must work together to feed more people. As bees feed us, we can feed them. Here's why it's important:

• As the world's most heavily traveled livestock, bees are transported to pollinate crops where resources cannot sustain large bee populations.
• A world population of over 9 billion people will require 70 percent more food by 2050.
• According to a United Nations study, we will lose land for growing food in the coming years. 
• If we stay the current course, we soon will be facing a world riddled with something most of us have not personally experienced: food insecurity.
• This is all the more reason for us to help feed the bees while they are helping to pollinate many of the fruits, nuts and vegetables that the world needs for a healthy, nutritious diet.
  

How Feed a Bee Works

• The Feed a Bee initiative works with people across the country to grow 50 million flowers and to increase bee forage areas.
• Just 11 weeks after its launch, the FeedABee campaign exceeded its goal of receiving pledges to plant 50 million flowers in 2015. 
• Almost 200,000 people visited www.FeedABee.com and supported the campaign by requesting a free seed packet to plant in their local communities, committing to grow bee-attractant plants or requesting to have the Feed a Bee initiative "plant on their bee-half." 
• Feed a Bee also taps into the power of collaboration by working with government, nonprofit organizations and businesses on planting and education initiatives. To date, the initiative has secured more than 50 collaborators, exceeding the initial goal of 50 partners.
  

How You Can Help

• Join this initiative by visiting the Planning Department located at 115 N. Poplar Street, Aberdeen, NC to pick up your free packets of wildflowers.  Citizens will receive a max of 25 packets and businesses will receive a max of 50 packets.  We are currently out of free packets of wildflowers.
  
• Share your planting photos using #FeedABee on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, lnstagram and Tumblr. 
• You can also visit www.beehealth.bayer.us/feed-a-bee to see more planting tips, how-to videos and partnership updates. 
• Whether you have your own acreage or just a flower pot on your back deck, you can help improve bee health by planting bee­ attractant flowers that supply bees with pollen and nectar.