By Mark Anderson
The “Bee City” movement is all “abuzz” across North America but especially in Ontario, Canada. There, on June 24, Severn Township and the city of Orillia both received their official “Bee City” designations, centering on the importance of preventing a steep drop in the number of bees and other pollinators that play a crucial role in the human food supply. The organization Bee City Canada expects the populous city of Barrie, Ontario, about an hour north of Toronto, to soon become the 30th Bee City in all of Canada.
Stateside, there are some 86 Bee City USA cities—as municipalities on both sides of the border pledge to plant pollinator-friendly vegetation and raise awareness about the importance of pollinators and the threats against them to help stop what appears to be a drastic bee-colony collapse and declining butterfly numbers, much of which has been attributed to pesticide use.