Haagen Daaz: Saving the Bees One Flower at a Time

Dec 14, 2008 by The Tasty Buzz

Haagen Dazs rocks. Not only do they have this crazy cute website (complete with chirping birds and flying bees!) designed to help educate about bee decline and fund raise for bee research, they also have just announced a $125,000 donation to the University of Davis' department of Entomology to launch a nation-wide contest to design a half-acre bee garden for our beloved pollinators. I'm not sure how to express how excited I am about this without a bevy of exclamation points. But, since I can't contain myself, here I go: WOOHOO!! GO HAAGEN DAZS and UC DAVIS!!!!!!!! Phew. I feel so much better now that I got that out. I'm kind of against the use of frequent exclamation points, but sometimes it must be done. (Haagen Dazs, by the way, also proves that you can become an extremely popular business with a name that no one knows how to spell or pronounce. In fact, I had to check the spelling on this company about five times while writing this post. Nice work, Haagan Dazs.) Anyway, this genius idea will encourage landscape designers everywhere to submit a plan for a half-acre bee garden at UC Davis, to provide a haven for the honeybees used for research there. In case you didn't know, UC Davis is one of the bee research hot spots in the U.S. The garden will provide a seasonal variety of plants and flowers so the plants will have nectar and pollen year-round. The garden will also educate visitors on how they can make bee gardens of their own. The garden is expected to be the first of many pollinator gardens at UC Davis. I can't help it--I must say it again: GO UC DAVIS!!! As Eric Mussen, a Cooperative Extension apiculturist in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, said: "The garden will be extremely helpful in demonstrating that bees are not a nuisance in the backyard, but instead are obtaining food and water essential for their survival," That's right--bees are not a nuisance. They are responsible for about 1/3 of the food on your plate. In a time where there are a million different environmental causes that are--in many ways--so intangible, here's a cause that you can do something about directly, and it benefits the food on your plate. And...honey is yummy. Let's face it. To see the original article with info about designing a bee garden, click here. Or, to check out the Haagen Dazs website, go here: www.helpthehoneybees.com Last, but not least, I left out a few of these: !!!!!!!!!!! It might be the caffeine I just drank (chai green tea with honey). God knows caffeine in my sensitive body is a bit like crack. But I think I'm just darn excited.