News

LIGHTNING EDITORIAL: To bee or not to bee

By Bill Moss, Published: May 19, 2015

To bee or not to bee. That was the question.

The Hendersonville City Council chose to bee.
Council members hurled no slings and arrows at the proposal when the city’s Tree Board and Environmental Sustainability Board recommended that the council designate Hendersonville as the nation’s seventh Bee City USA. Modeled after Tree City, the Bee City program celebrates the vital role bees play as pollinators. “One in every three bites of food we eat is courtesy of insect pollination,” the resolution said. “Even our meat and milk trace back to insects that pollinate the alfalfa and other feed for beef cattle and cows.”
Without bees, we’d have no food, or much less food. Without bees we’d shuffle off this mortal coil more quickly and would less happily bear the whips and scorns of time.
The council agreed to designate the Public Works Department as official sponsor of the Bee City program. The city also committed to hold educational events, urge pollinator habitat plantings, post bee news updates on the city’s website and erect at least one sign proclaiming Hendersonville as a Bee City USA.
Against a sea of troubles that is the city budget, downtown parking and public art, it was a honey of an outcome.