With the aim of providing nectar for the disappearing bee population, the Israel Honey Board and KKL-JNF have launched a tree-planting project that will include the planting of 100,000 nectar-producing trees and bushes throughout Israel.
Translated by KKL-JNF from the original Hebrew article by Moshe Cohen, June 16, 2020, Maariv
Save the Bees. Photo: Needpix.com
The Israel Honey Board and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund have initiated a joint campaign to plant tens of thousands of trees as food for the diminishing bee population. An integral part of the campaign will be the planting of approximately 100,000 nectar-producing trees and bushes throughout Israel each year. The initiative was launched in light of the growing phenomenon of disappearing bee populations.
Joining the save-the-bees campaign are students from the Kfar Silver Youth Village near Ashkelon, who have already planted 450 trees on a 2.5-acre plot of land. The KKL-JNF nursery in Eshtaol supplied the trees, which included wild carob, almond and various strains of Eucalyptus trees, as well as white broom shrubs. According to recent estimates, about a third of the world’s bees have become extinct. The reasons for this are not yet entirely clear, and research institutions throughout the world are studying the phenomenon. The United States, for example, has allocated about 200 million dollars for special research in this field.
The Israeli Honey Production and Marketing Board have warned that the continued disappearance of bees threatens the existence of agriculture everywhere and raises serious concern for the future of plant-based food production. This is because plant species rely on bees, which are nature’s primary pollinators, to reproduce.
Researchers believe that the main cause of this phenomenon is the constant expansion of urban areas and real estate in parallel with a decrease in agricultural areas, creating a shortage of nectar-providing flowers that are the bees’ food.