National Honeybee Day is this month. One local group is drawing global attention to disappearing bee colonies. Another wants you to send them your honey.

by Olivia Springer

August 20 is National Honeybee Day. Who knew there was such a holiday? But there is, and beekeeping is big in WNC. So we checked in with several local beekeepers, many of whom were so busy tending to bees that they hadn’t planned special events to mark the occasion. Still, some had set aside their hats and gloves long enough to start working on interesting projects. N’ann Harp’s organization, Friends of Honeybees, has a slew of high-profile bee-saving efforts in the works, including a screening of the film Vanishing of the Bees for children from all 50 states at the UN in New York City early next year. The film focuses on Colony Collapse Disorder, a honeybee die-off that hit North American colonies hard starting in 2006.

The Center for Honey Bee Research, part of the Buncombe County Beekeepers Chapter and formerly called the WNC Bee School, is hosting its first annual Black Jar Competition. Unlike a honey contest at the fair, the jars will be judged strictly on taste and not other factors, like visual presentation. Entries will be accepted from the public until August 15, and judging takes place in August. Winners will be announced in September.

Ashevillean Debra Roberts, co-producer of the nonprofit Honey Bee Project with Heloise Jones and Tracey Schmidt, is traveling to Vermont this month to accept an award for her work with bees. She’ll speak to a group at the Vermont Center for Whole Communities about beekeeping. Her nonprofit, which she founded in 2006, creates educational videos and other materials to help children in grades K-6 understand more about bees.

By some estimates, Western North Carolina has lost approximately two thirds of its bee population since 2006, and it’s not even the hardest-hit area by CCD in the country (those would be Illinois and Iowa, which have seen between 70 and 79 percent of their bee populations decimated, or Massachusetts, which has lost between 60 and 69 percent). Another of Harp’s projects will be to create a 150-acre “biodiversity community” between Asheville and Charlotte, allowing area beekeepers to breed regionally adapted bees.

To learn more, visit www.friendsofhoneybees.net, www.wncbees.org and www.thehoneybeeproject.com.