More than 100 bee advocates were invited to participate in a 3-day conference in Marin County, California from December 10-13. The public summary presentation by thought leaders Mark Winston, Tom Seeley, Marla Spivak, Jim Frazier, William Klett, Stephen Martin, Heather Mattila, and Chaz Mraz will be held tonight at Dominican University.

Conference organizer Bonnie Morse would have been hard-pressed to find an opening speaker who could have charged us to be more audacious--Larry Brilliant, the first leader of Google.org and a leader of a public health team that successfully eradicated small pox as  a public health threat.

The conference mantra was to be open-minded and think big. Stay tuned for the audacious ideas spawned by both a sense of urgency to reverse pollinator declines and a willingness to listen intently to one another.  

Representatives from five Bee City USA affiliates attended:  Laura Bee from Ashland, OR; Sharon Schmidt from Phoenix, OR; Bob Redmond from Seattle, WA; Patricia Algara from San Francisco, CA; and Phyllis Stiles, director of Bee City USA, from Asheville, NC.

On August 21, Minneapolis made a bold move for bees. According to WCCB CBS Minnesota, their resolution means the city will now plant more food for pollinators and decrease pesticide use on land the city owns and manages. Three cheers for Minneapolis!

Southern Oregon University is pulling out all of the stops for this year's Arbor Day Celebration.  In addition to planting lots of trees, they are announcing that they have been designated a Tree Campus USA and the inaugural Bee Campus USA! Listen to an interview here.

Noted mycologist Paul Stamets will speak on April 8 at 9:30 and the Bee Campus USA announcement will take place at 12:00.

Thanks to all North Carolinans who rushed to wherever the Bee Aware Team were tabling that day to add their order to the stack.  Now the kids have enough to ask the legislature to approve their specialty license plate which will support the native pollinator habitat at Grandfather Mountain and bee research at North Carolina State University for years and years to come.  

Hopefully by this summer, any North Carolina driver will be able to choose a Save the Honeybee specialty license plate.

Thanks to these kids for inspiring us all.

The Bee Aware middle school science team from Banner Elk, NC, is on the home stretch and they won't give up.  They have been at locations in Asheville and Charlotte asking people to order their honeybee license plates since their return home on Thursday from meeting with President Obama.

If you're in Asheville on Sunday, March 29, between noon and 5:00, stop by either the French Broad Food Coop (on Biltmore Ave.) or the Asheville Bee Charmer (on Battery Park) and order your honeybee specialty license plate. Even if you don't order a license plate, you need to meet these incredible champions for bees.

If they don't get 500 orders by March 30, all of their hard work will be for naught. These plates will not only raise awareness about honeybees, they will raise funds for pollinator habitat at Grandfather Mountain and for bee research at NC State University.  

Click here for the application, with complete instructions. The cost is $15 which should be paid by check. Bring your registration card for your license plate number, your drivers license number, year/make/model/body style of your car, vehicle identification number, and full name of your insurance company & the policy number. 

For more information visit www.beeawarenc.org

Around the world, airports are recognizing the benefits of sharing their open sunny fields with imperiled honey bees. It all started with Hamburg Airport in Germany in 1999. Today, from O'Hare in Chicago, to Sea-Tac in Seattle, to Montreal and Copenhagen, airports are partnering with local beekeepers to offer bees safe foraging areas. Read Danielle Beurteaux' article in the New York Times on Feb. 19.