Just yesterday, the Obama administration announced the first National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators.

“The goal is to protect honey bees and other pollinators and their habitats. Bees — along with birds, bats and butterflies — play a key function by pollinating commercial fruit and vegetable crops; alfalfa and clover that provide feed for cattle; and the nuts, seeds and fruits that sustain massive grizzly bears and delicate songbirds. Some estimates put the economic value of their activities at roughly $15 billion a year.

Drastic decline of honey bees in recent years spurred the initiative. The plan will manage the way forests burned by wildfire are replanted, the way offices are landscaped and the way roadside habitats where bees feed are preserved.”

“I have to say that it is mighty darn lovely having the White House acknowledge the indigenous, unpaid and invisible workforce that somehow has managed to sustain all terrestrial life without health-care subsidies, or a single COLA, for that past 250 million years,” said Sam Droege, one of the country’s foremost experts on native bees.

Read Juliet Eilperin’s article in the Washington Post here.