Be nice to bees! Seriously – bees are in decline due to disease, chemicals and lack of green spaces to thrive. When I say they are in decline, they are in dramatic decline all over the world and the knock-on effects could be quite devastating too when you realise that bees are responsible for pollinating crops. Without decent crops.. well, you know the rest.
Further reading shows that it’s thought that the culprit in halving the bee population is neonicotinoid pesticides, widely used on flowering crops. Even tiny does are lethal to bees, and yet, they keep on being used (actually, if I had the where-with-all, I’d research to see what beauty brands buy from crops that use neonicotinoid pesticides – and if you’re a brand reading this, maybe you’d just like to check that you’re not a major contributor to us losing one of our most efficient pollinators, because if I do ever get the resources to research this, I will name and shame).
So, it’s not for nothing that Melvita is a favourite brand of mine. Friends of the Earth is creating 60 Bee Worlds throughout the country to provide decent (and untreated) forage and shelter so that our bees have the best possible fighting chance – and Melvita are Melvita Foundation has donated funds to develop 20 of the Bee Worlds. The Covent Garden Melvita store actually keeps two hives on its roof – and you can buy the honey from them at certain times of the year.
I’ll have more information on the Melvita Bee Dig volunteer project later on.
In the meantime, just a thought on bee venom products. There is no good way to get venom out of a bee – the only way to get a bee to produce venom is put it under stress. This is done by giving mild electric shocks so that the bees sting, and the venom is collected on plastic sheets. It’s then all scraped off the sheets and turned into beauty cream. For god’s sake! While the bees aren’t killed in huge numbers (although a proportion will die), what a crappy life for a bee, hey? I won’t feature, and never have knowingly featured products containing bee venom.
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All products are sent to me as samples from brands and agencies unless otherwise stated. Affiliate links may be used. Posts are not affiliate driven.
8 comments
I didn’t even know this about bee venom, in fact I didn’t even know it was even used in products. Thanks for educating me. A x
http://becomingraje.blogspot.co.uk/
Yikes! *drops brochure on bee venom beauty pdts* Had no idea they were made this way.
Do name and shame! But only if u can find the time.
Excellent info on bees… I’m partial to honey in my tea and I’ll hate for bees to be extinct!
Interesting post, thank you. I would be interested to hear more about the companies who are using the pesticides.
I think it’s so much research I’m unlikely to be able to do it justice.. one day, one day!!
You might be interested that collecting Royal Jelly also results in the deaths of thousands of bee larvae to collect any volumes…
I saw someone write an article singing the praises of bee venom yesterday and thought it HAD to be cruel. Thanks so much for the information.
Excellent to see you commenting on the whole bee sting venom subject. Have been trying to find out if there’s anything more than pseudo science to it for the past couple of days, and the ‘harvesting’ of it in the first place is just unnecessarily cruel really. Thanks xx
GailyGumdrops
That’s awful, poor bees! Every summer bees make their home in my bathroom wall and I usually have to keep the window open so they can get out. My son loves to see them and would be so sad to hear bees (or any creature) get treated like this for vanity ;(