At the Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park, our resident honeybees work to pollinate our native landscape, help grow our Texas wildflowers, and produce golden honey. That’s why this National Honeybee Day, we’re celebrating one of nature’s hardest-working heroes.
These tiny pollinators play a mighty role in our ecosystem, helping plants reproduce and ensuring the fruits, vegetables, nuts, and flowers we enjoy continue to thrive. In fact, about one-third of the food we eat depends on pollinators like honeybees!
3 ways honeybees make the world go around:
- Pollinate our food – Honeybees help produce many of the foods we eat every day, including fruits, vegetables, coffee, nuts, and chocolate. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one out of every three bites of our food is created with the help of pollinators.
- Support biodiversity – By pollinating native plants, they help keep entire ecosystems balanced and healthy.
- Produce honey and wax – Beyond pollination, bees produce honey and beeswax, which can be used as sweetener, candles, medicine, skincare, and more.
The Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park is home to two beehives and hundreds of honeybees. These honeybees are busy from spring to fall pollinating the native Texas landscape and are cared for in partnership with Hives for Heroes, a nonprofit that offers military veterans with a healthy and meaningful transition from service. Through this collaboration, veterans learn beekeeping skills and find meaningful work, all while helping protect our honeybee population.
Lucky for us, a strong honeybee colony can make about two to three times more honey each year than they need to survive the winter – this means we get to enjoy it too! “They’re always working,” stated Robert Favela, Master Naturalist and Director of Facility Operations at the Bush Center. “They’re very busy working to produce the honey that we all love to eat.” Honey from the hives in the park is sold in the Museum Store.
On National Honeybee Day, we invite you to explore the Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park, listen for the hum of our bees at work, and enjoy the hard work of our local bees. Caring for our bees means protecting the health of our planet, and that’s something worth buzzing about.
The 15-acre Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park is open 365 days a year for self-guided tours from sunrise until sunset and is the perfect complement to your Museum visit. Explore a network of paths that will take you past the hardworking beehives and through native Texas environments such as Blackland Prairie, Post Oak Savannah, and Cross Timbers Forest.
