How Your Honey Choices Help All Pollinators, Not Just Honeybees

When we talk about “saving the bees,” we often picture honeybees busily filling hives with golden honey. But the truth about pollinator conservation extends far beyond the honeybee. While these industrious insects are vital to our food systems and honey production, they represent just one species among the thousands of pollinators that maintain our ecosystems.

What many honey lovers don’t realize is that their purchasing decisions can impact not just honeybees, but the entire pollinator community—including the often-overlooked native bees, butterflies, moths, and other essential creatures that keep our planet blooming. The choices we make about which honey to bring home can either support or undermine the delicate balance of our local pollinator networks.

Quick answer: Honeybees are one of roughly 4,000 bee species in North America, and native bees, butterflies, flies and beetles do much of the pollinating. Your honey choices matter because large migratory operations can crowd out wild bees and spread disease, while small local beekeepers keep hives at sensible densities and depend on diverse local flowers. Buying local raw honey and planting flowers both help the whole pollinator community.

At Nettie’s Bees, we believe that sustainable honey production must consider the complete ecological picture. Let’s explore how mindful honey choices can create ripple effects throughout the pollinator world, and why supporting the right kind of beekeeping practices matters for all pollinators.

Who are the pollinators?

What pollinators are there besides honeybees?

While honeybees get most of the attention, they’re actually relative newcomers to North America, having been introduced by European settlers. Our ecosystems evolved with native pollinators, which include:

• Native bees: North America is home to approximately 4,000 species of native bees, including mason bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees, and bumblebees. Many of these are solitary bees that nest in the ground or in hollow plant stems rather than forming large colonies.

• Butterflies and moths: These insects are especially important for pollinating certain wildflowers and plants that bloom at dusk or during the night.

• Flies: Particularly important in cooler climates and higher elevations where bee activity may be limited.

• Beetles: Often overlooked, beetles were among the first pollinators on Earth and still play crucial roles in many ecosystems.

• Hummingbirds: Though less common than insect pollinators, these birds are vital for certain plant species with tubular flowers.

Wild pollinators matter more than many people realize. A 2013 study in Science led by Lucas Garibaldi, covering 41 crop systems worldwide, found wild insects improved fruit set about twice as much as honeybees did, and their benefit held no matter how many honeybees were present. A few hundred blue orchard (mason) bees can pollinate an acre of apples, a job that takes thousands of honeybees.

Some plants have co-evolved with specific native pollinators, creating specialized relationships. The squash bee, for instance, specializes in cucumber, pumpkin, and squash flowers, starting work before dawn when these flowers open—long before honeybees become active.

Are pollinators declining?

Unfortunately, pollinators of all types face significant challenges. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and private research organizations have documented concerning trends:

• Wild bee abundance fell by an estimated 23% across the United States between 2008 and 2013, according to a 2016 study in PNAS led by Insu Koh.

• The eastern monarch butterfly population fell by about 84% between 1996 and 2015, based on counts at its Mexican overwintering sites (Semmens and colleagues, 2016).

• More than a quarter of North American bumblebee species are at risk of extinction, according to the IUCN Bumblebee Specialist Group.

The primary threats driving these declines include:

• Habitat loss and fragmentation
• Pesticide exposure, particularly neonicotinoids
• Climate change disrupting bloom times and migration patterns
• Disease and parasite spread
• Intensified agricultural practices

Pollinator diversity is essential for ecosystem resilience. Different species pollinate in various weather conditions, at different times of day, and throughout different seasons. This diversity ensures that pollination services continue despite environmental fluctuations. When we lose pollinator diversity, we risk creating ecological systems that are less adaptable to change.

How does honey production affect pollinators?

Which beekeeping practices can harm wild pollinators?

Not all honey production supports pollinator health. Several common practices in conventional honey operations can negatively impact both managed honeybees and wild pollinators:

Monoculture Crop Pollination: Many large-scale beekeepers generate revenue by providing pollination services to commercial farms, particularly almond orchards in California. This practice, while economically valuable, exposes honeybees to:

• Nutritional stress from foraging on a single crop
• Higher pesticide exposure in intensive agricultural settings
• Increased disease transmission when colonies from across the country are placed in close proximity

Bees fed on a single crop tend to be less well nourished, and poorly fed bees cope worse with parasites and pesticides.

Chemical Treatments: Some commercial beekeeping operations rely heavily on in-hive chemical treatments to control pests and diseases. These chemicals can:

• Accumulate in wax and honey
• Impact honeybee health over time
• Potentially affect nearby wild pollinators when foragers bring contaminated nectar or pollen back to their colony

Hive Density and Competition: When too many honeybee hives are placed in one area (often the case with commercial operations), they can outcompete native pollinators for limited floral resources. A 2017 review in PLOS ONE by Rachel Mallinger and colleagues found that most studies of competition reported some negative effect of managed bees on wild bees, especially where hives were dense.

Disease Spillover: Pathogens can spread from managed honeybee colonies to wild pollinator populations. A 2014 study in Nature by Matthias Fürst and colleagues found deformed wing virus spreading from honeybees to wild bumblebees in Britain, with infection in bumblebees tracking infection in nearby honeybees.

Which beekeeping practices help all pollinators?

In contrast, responsible beekeeping practices can create positive outcomes for the entire pollinator community:

Diverse Forage Landscapes: Sustainable beekeepers often advocate for and maintain diverse flowering landscapes that support their honeybees throughout the seasons. These same diverse floral resources benefit wild pollinators as well. Landscapes with many kinds of flowers blooming one after another support both honeybees and wild pollinators.

Chemical-Free Management: Beekeepers who use organic or treatment-free approaches, or who minimize chemical interventions through integrated pest management, reduce the toxic load in the environment. This benefits all pollinators, not just honeybees.

Appropriate Hive Density: Responsible beekeepers are mindful of how many hives they place in a given area, ensuring that they don’t overwhelm the local carrying capacity of the land or create undue competition with native species.

Habitat Creation: Many small-scale, locally-focused beekeepers actively enhance habitat around their apiaries by:

• Planting native flowering plants
• Maintaining undisturbed areas for ground-nesting bees
• Leaving some dead wood and hollow stems for cavity-nesting pollinators
• Protecting water sources with safe access for insects

How does local honey help pollinators?

Why do diverse flowers matter?

Local beekeepers have a vested interest in maintaining diverse floral resources throughout the year. Unlike large commercial operations that might move hives to follow crop blooms, local beekeepers need their immediate landscape to provide continuous forage.

This commitment to floral diversity directly benefits all pollinators. When local beekeepers advocate for reduced mowing of roadside wildflowers, preservation of meadows, or planting of pollinator gardens, they’re supporting the entire pollinator community.

The remarkable variety of honey flavors from a single geographic region—from light spring honey to robust fall varieties—is direct evidence of the floral diversity that sustainable beekeeping helps maintain. Each distinctive honey varietal represents a different flowering plant community that supports specific pollinators during various seasons.

Many small native bees forage only a few hundred yards from their nests, making local flowers especially critical for them. When beekeepers maintain diverse forage for their honeybees (who can travel several miles), they’re simultaneously supporting these shorter-range native pollinators.

How is small-scale beekeeping different from migratory beekeeping?

The ecological footprint of honey production varies dramatically between small-scale, locally-focused operations and large migratory commercial enterprises:

Reduced Transportation Impact: Local honey operations don’t ship hives across the country on diesel trucks, reducing both carbon emissions and the geographic spread of bee diseases and pests.

Stable Habitat Relationships: Stationary apiaries develop long-term relationships with their surrounding landscapes. Beekeepers come to know which plants support pollinators throughout the seasons and can work to enhance these resources over time.

Regional Adaptation: Local honeybee populations managed by small-scale beekeepers often develop adaptations to regional conditions and may be more resilient than commercially raised stock transported from distant locations.

Disease Mitigation: Hives that stay put aren’t mixed with colonies from across the country every spring, which limits how far pests and diseases travel.

How can your honey purchases help?

What should you ask your honey producer?

To ensure your honey purchases support healthy pollinator ecosystems, consider asking honey producers these questions:

About Chemical Use:

• “Do you use synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides in or around your hives?”
• “What methods do you use to manage Varroa mites and other honeybee pests?”
• “Do you place hives near conventional agricultural operations that use pesticides?”

About Habitat Practices:

• “Do you actively plant or maintain diverse flowering plants for your bees?”
• “How do you ensure your bees have forage throughout the seasons?”
• “What habitat features do you maintain for wild pollinators?”

About Local Ecosystem Knowledge:

• “Are you familiar with the native bee species in this area?”
• “How do you minimize competition between your honeybees and wild pollinators?”
• “Do you participate in any local conservation initiatives?”

A beekeeper who shows interest and knowledge about these topics likely maintains practices that benefit the broader pollinator community.

Which labels and certifications matter?

While “local” is not a regulated term, honey produced within about 50 miles of your location generally qualifies as truly local. This proximity matters for pollinator support because it means the honey likely comes from the same ecosystem you inhabit.

Several certifications can provide additional assurance about sustainable practices:

• Certified Naturally Grown: An alternative to USDA Organic, particularly popular with small-scale producers, that prohibits synthetic chemical use and requires sustainable practices.

• Certified Organic: Requires adherence to organic standards in both hive management and the foraging area around apiaries.

However, certification costs can be prohibitive for the smallest producers, so the absence of certification doesn’t necessarily indicate poor practices. Direct conversation with beekeepers often provides the most reliable information about their approach.

Why does sustainable honey cost more?

The price differential between mass-produced commercial honey and sustainable local honey reflects real differences in production methods and externalized costs:

Environmental Costs: Commercial honey production often externalities costs like habitat degradation, pollinator competition, and carbon emissions from transportation.

Labor and Care: Sustainable beekeeping is labor-intensive, requiring regular monitoring and management practices that support colony health without synthetic chemicals.

Pollinator Investment: The price premium for sustainable local honey helps fund habitat creation, diverse forage planting, and conservation-minded beekeeping practices.

A small-scale beekeeper typically spends many hours a year on each hive, inspecting, treating mites and harvesting. This hands-on care allows for more environmentally sensitive approaches but requires fair compensation to be economically viable.

What else can you do for pollinators?

Complementary Actions for Honey Consumers

Purchasing sustainable honey is just the beginning. Consider these additional actions to support pollinator health:

Garden for Pollinators:

• Plant native flowering species that provide sequential blooms throughout the growing season
• Include plants with different flower shapes and sizes to accommodate diverse pollinators
• Avoid cultivars with double blooms, which often lack accessible nectar and pollen
• Leave some areas of bare soil for ground-nesting bees

Reduce Chemical Impacts:

• Eliminate cosmetic pesticide use in home landscapes
• Choose organic produce when possible to support chemical-free agriculture
• Avoid plants treated with neonicotinoids, which can persist in plant tissues and affect pollinators

Create Habitat Features:

• Install insect hotels for cavity-nesting bees
• Leave some areas unmulched and undisturbed for ground-nesting species
• Provide shallow water sources with landing spots for insects

Community Advocacy:

• Support pollinator-friendly policies in your community
• Advocate for reduced mowing of roadside vegetation
• Participate in citizen science projects that monitor pollinator populations

The Xerces Society notes that even small habitat patches, when networked across urban and suburban landscapes, can significantly support pollinator diversity and abundance.

Seasonal Support for Year-Round Pollinator Health

Different seasons present unique opportunities to support pollinators:

Spring:

• Early-blooming plants like willows, maples, and redbuds provide critical first food for emerging pollinators
• Delay garden cleanup to allow overwintering insects to emerge naturally
• Create mud puddles for mason bees to use as nest-building material

Summer:

• Maintain diverse blooms throughout the hottest months
• Provide water sources during dry periods
• Avoid midday gardening activities when pollinators are most active

Fall:

• Late-blooming plants like asters and goldenrod are crucial for preparing pollinators for winter
• Allow some plant stems to remain standing for overwintering cavity-nesting bees
• Reduce fall cleanup to provide overwintering habitat

Winter:

• Leave leaf litter in some areas for overwintering insects
• Plan and order native plants for the coming growing season
• Advocate for reduced use of winter road salt, which can damage soil and plant health

How does Nettie’s Bees support pollinators?

What we do at Nettie’s Bees

We’re a small, local operation, and we try to keep it that way for the bees’ sake:

• Our hives stay local. They sit on cranberry bogs, fields and gardens around Rochester, Marion and Wareham. Our pollination work is for nearby cranberry growers, not cross-country trips to almond orchards.
• We rescue swarms. When honeybees swarm into someone’s yard, we collect and rehome them instead of letting them be sprayed. See swarm retrieval.
• We leave the bees their honey. We harvest only the surplus a colony doesn’t need for winter.
• We talk about all bees. At the Honey House and at markets, we’re always glad to talk about native bees and what to plant for them.

Frequently asked questions

Does buying honey help save the bees?

Buying honey supports beekeepers, which keeps managed honeybees going, but honeybees aren’t endangered. To help the bees that are declining, native bees, plant flowers, avoid pesticides and buy from small local beekeepers rather than imported blends.

Do honeybees harm native bees?

They can, where hives are packed densely and flowers are scarce, through competition and spread of disease. At sensible densities with plenty of forage, honeybees and native bees share a landscape well.

Which pollinator is most important?

No single one. Honeybees are the most important managed pollinator for many crops, but wild bees, flies, butterflies and others pollinate most wild plants and add a lot to crop yields too.

What is the best thing I can do for pollinators?

Plant flowers, ideally native ones, that bloom from early spring to late fall, and stop using insecticides in your yard. Leaving some bare ground and hollow stems gives native bees places to nest.

Sources

• Garibaldi LA et al. “Wild pollinators enhance fruit set of crops regardless of honey bee abundance.” Science, 2013. PubMed
• Koh I et al. “Modeling the status, trends, and impacts of wild bee abundance in the United States.” PNAS, 2016. PubMed
• Semmens BX et al. “Quasi-extinction risk and population targets for the Eastern, migratory population of monarch butterflies.” Scientific Reports, 2016. PubMed
• Mallinger RE, Gaines-Day HR, Gratton C. “Do managed bees have negative effects on wild bees?” PLOS ONE, 2017. PubMed
• Fürst MA et al. “Disease associations between honeybees and bumblebees as a threat to wild pollinators.” Nature, 2014. PubMed
• IUCN SSC Bumblebee Specialist Group, North American bumblebee assessment.

Conclusion

The honey jar in your shopping cart represents more than just a sweet treat—it’s a vote for a particular approach to our relationship with pollinators and the environment. By choosing honey from sustainable, locally-focused producers like Nettie’s Bees, you’re supporting beekeeping practices that benefit not just honeybees, but the entire community of native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators that maintain our ecosystems.

The true value of thoughtfully produced honey extends far beyond its taste. It includes the habitat preserved for all pollinators, the reduced chemical load in our environment, the sustainable beekeeping practices that respect natural systems, and the educational opportunities that connect consumers with the source of their food.

As awareness grows about the critical importance of pollinator diversity, your honey purchasing decisions become increasingly significant. Each jar represents an opportunity to support either a system that puts pressure on wild pollinators or one that helps them thrive.

Make your honey purchase count for all pollinators: buy from a beekeeper you can talk to, and plant something that blooms.