Bees for ESG Impact: How organizations can support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals with data-yielding honeybee hives
Sustainability Goals
Today, organizations of all sizes are challenged — no, expected — to contribute to sustainability. Investors, customers, and other stakeholders are holding companies accountable for affecting positive change locally and globally.
“The course of climatization — the process by which climate change will transform society — will play out in the coming years in every corner of society.” — Justin Worland, Time Magazine
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations in 2015 are helpful reference points for organizations setting and measuring Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) targets.
Leaders seeking to create a comprehensive plan for their company’s sustainability and societal impact often refer to the SDGs for guidance.
And yet, within this framework, “green teams” maintain a lot of latitude in how to interpret and apply the goals in a way that matches the organization’s culture and resources.
The need for effective and efficient ways to achieve SDGs has opened up a creative explosion of ecological services, and we are here for it.
The Plight of Pollinators
Environmentally-conscious citizens are mostly aware of the plight of pollinators and want to do something about it. Bees specifically are responsible for the fertilization of many flowering plants, including 75% of food crops. As biologists know from the last 15 years of scrutiny, bees are dying at an unprecedented rate due to disease, pesticides, loss of habitat, and climate change.
As a result, more and more organizations are embracing the idea of bringing honeybee hives to their properties as part of a broader sustainability program. (Bees prove to generate a lot of buzz among stakeholders.)
But it’s important to tie such an effort to strategic objectives to ensure it adds empirical value.
The Risk of Greenwashing
While a standalone beehive will pollinate its immediate surroundings and is compelling in its own right, its overall impact is relatively confined.
To be effective, a sustainability team must avoid “greenwashing” or exaggerating the environmental benefit of a given effort, which can lead to an eco-friendly reputation being undermined.
Fortunately, there is one surprisingly efficient way to make an outsized impact on bee health and the environment at large.
A Network of Data-Yielding Beehives
Professional beekeepers using scientific methods to control for variables ensure that data on hive health can be collected at scale and normalized for analysis. Big data from a nationwide network of beehives managed in this standardized way creates the opportunity to study many open questions.
Data harvested from beehives can inform us about our environment, the security of our food system, disaster recovery strategies, biodiversity, pollinator resiliency, and more.
Beekeeping done right will enrich the local ecology for miles around the hive, and a network of scientifically managed beehives lets us see the whole world through a new lens.
Incidentally, such a networked beekeeping approach directly supports 10 of the 17 SDGs put forth by the UN.
How a Data-Yielding Beehive Network Supports the SDGs
Bees make non-linear impacts on a complex, interconnected system. To borrow a term from sister pollinators, it’s the butterfly effect on full display.
Honeybees managed with research in mind are surprisingly efficient cross-target investments with synergistic outcomes across multiple SDGs:
Let’s Take a Bees-Eye View Through the SDGs.
We’ll start with the most obvious and work toward the more subtle effects of a data-yielding beehive network.
First, pollination.
Bees spread pollen as they forage, naturally fertilizing flowering plants and trees.
Goal #15 Life on Land, specifically targets 15.1, 15.5, and 15.9: Through pollination, honeybees directly support the conservation of terrestrial ecosystems, reforestation efforts, and increased biodiversity.(2, 3, 4)
As more flowering plants flourish, species that feed on plants thrive as well.
For example, fish…
Goal #14 Life Below Water, specifically target 14.4: Bees improve the production of plant-based sources of compounds commonly found in fish which sustainably restore fish stocks and reverse the effects of overfishing.(5)
… and people. Crops pollinated by bees produce more food with higher nutritional value.
Goal #2 Zero Hunger, targets 2.2 and 2.3: Bee pollination increases crop yield and enhances the nutritional value of fruits, vegetables, and seeds.(6, 7, 8, 9)
Food from healthier crops has more shelf appeal. Call us shallow, but if food looks good, consumers are less likely to waste it.
Goal #12 Responsible Consumption and Production target 12.3. Visual aesthetics—shape, size, and color—of food directly impacts its shelf-life and commercial value, and how much is wasted.(10)
Now let’s move beyond food.
Because in reality, honeybees pollinate over 400 different plant species, most of which are not fruit and vegetable crops.(11)
Bee-pollinated plant life, including many species of trees, greatly influences air quality…
Goal #3 Good Health and Well-Being, target 3.9: Cleaner air reduces death and illness from contaminated air, water, and soil. Plants and trees remove toxins from the air and lead to better health for humans and all living beings.
… support clean water…
Goal #6. Clean Water and Sanitation, target 6.6: Bees support resilience and biodiversity within aquatic ecosystems including forests and mountains which greatly impact waterways.(12, 13) Cleaner water sources require fewer resources to filter for human consumption and avoid contaminating downstream areas.
… and make cities more sustainable.
Goal #11 Sustainable Cities and Communities: The pollination of urban flora improves urban air quality.(14) Bees also help make urban gardens and public open spaces self-sustaining and less costly to maintain.(15, 16)
By the way, bees tend to do better in urban areas because they have access to more varied diets—i.e. more biodiversity.(17) Overly-manicured suburban landscapes and areas near industrial farms, e.g. mono-crop agriculture, actually offer poor foraging habitats for pollinators.
Did you know? The U.S. Green Building Council awards up to 7 LEED points for adding a pollinator habitat to a commercial building?
We’ll take a conceptual turn now on our journey through the impact of honeybees on modern society.
People have always been fascinated by bees. Observing them often inspires innovation.
Goal #9 Industry Innovation, target 9b: Bees have long influenced designers and engineers in industrial manufacturing, architecture, transportation, communications, health care, computer science, and other domains.(18, 19, 20)
Urban beekeeping is a high-impact way for students to practice concepts in STEAM education.(21)
Biophilic design is an approach to designing buildings in a way that increases connectivity to the natural environment to promote human health and well-being. Many space designers strategically place beehives in workplaces and public areas where they can be readily observed and enjoyed.
Zooming out another level, a large-scale network of honeybee hives helps us see the environment in new ways. And ultimately helps us fight global warming.
Goal #13 Climate Actions, target 13.3 seeks to improve awareness of climate change mitigation, adaption, and early warning systems. The use of bees in environmental monitoring improves our understanding of the climate’s impacts on our world, detects environmental toxins, and more.(22, 23, 24)
Analysis of the genomics of pollen found in honey (HoneyDNA) reveals the diversity of plant species available to nourish domestic and native pollinators.
“Impact reduction” is also addressed in target 13.3. HoneyDNA helps societies rebuild after hurricanes, wildfires, and floods caused by climate change. Analyses of pollen found in honey made before and after such events can tell us what species of plants should be replanted in what proportion to restore the natural balance of the local ecology, or to diversify it to improve an area’s resilience.
Note: The SDGs don’t explicitly call for capturing carbon. Instead, Goal #7 seeks to improve access to affordable, reliable, sustainable energy.
So, as we work hard to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, bees help counteract the negative effects of their emissions. As bees pollinate and support more plant life, and more plants are able to capture more carbon through photosynthesis, more carbon is therefore removed from the atmosphere.*
* Plants sequester carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, transforming CO2 into sugars that store energy and provide the building blocks of plant matter. As plant leaves fall and as roots decay, plants contribute that carbon to the soil. Therefore bee pollination—as any action promoting plant life—boosts progress toward net-zero carbon emissions. The exact amount of additional carbon captured by a beehive is an open scientific inquiry. (Stay tuned.)
Honeybee insights are shared to enhance research on food systems and climate change, and economically empower individuals.
Goal #17: Partnerships to Achieve the Goals: Target 17.6 enhances access to science, technology and innovation, and knowledge sharing.
Projects such as combining large sets of bee health data with NASA-grade satellite data seek to understand the impact of environmental changes on the security of food systems.
Partnerships with non-profit associations such as the Urban Beekeeping Lab are designed to analyze apiculture trends and spread best practices.
Such collaborations aim to empower anyone in the world to learn how to sustainably pollinate local crops, harvest honey, strengthen local environments, or earn a living through beekeeping.
Get Ahead of the Curve
Adding data-yielding beehives to a scientifically managed network supports SDGs in a way that’s both ancient and modern. It’s a low-hanging fruit solution that supports a grander ESG vision for forward-looking organizations.
SDGs may not be mandated through regulations in all countries yet, but the trend is clear: companies that wait to meet these standards will soon be playing catch-up with competitors.
With a networked beehive program, organizations can support a keystone species, advance pollinator health worldwide, and visibly demonstrate priorities to stakeholders.
Data on both network-wide colonies and individual apiaries can be incorporated into sustainability reports. Honey harvested from on-premise beehives makes for a unique amenity, offering local flavor and sparking rich conversations about all kinds of environmental causes.
Compared to most ESG efforts, beehives are extremely simple to implement and manage through a turnkey service provider such as The Bees Bees Company.
The 10 SDGs Supported by Best Bees’ Network of Data-Yielding Beehives
#2. Zero hunger
#3. Good health and well-being
#6. Clean water and sanitation
#9. Industry innovation and infrastructure
#11. Sustainable cities and communities
#12. Responsible consumption and production
#13. Climate actions
#14. Life below water
#15. Life on land
#17. Partnership for the goals
About The Best Bees Company
Best Bees offers professional beekeeping services that allow clients to make an impact. Individual citizens, multinational corporations, and anyone in between can contribute to the UN’s SDGs in ways they may not even realize.
Our scientific beekeeping service deploys state-of-the-art hive management techniques and pools standardized data across a wide network of colonies for broader research objectives. We have standardized beekeeping practices to control for variables in our dataset. This ensures that what we record is reliable for research partners.
With the world’s first and largest beehive management system, a proprietary system dubbed “Bzzz”, we ensure the health of each beehive in our network is recorded and ready for research. Bzzz tracks population, queen health, honey sums, diseases, and mite levels back a full decade, and data-yielding hives from Boston to LA continue to build on the dataset with each hive maintenance visit. Our data has been used in collaborations with NASA DEVELOP, Google Earth, MIT, and other partners.
HoneyDNA is another first-of-its-kind innovation from the Best Bees team, developed to quantify the biodiversity of a local environment through the genomic analysis of pollen found in a beehive’s honey. HoneyDNA analyses are included among other key metrics in Bee & Biodiversity reports commissioned by corporate clients.
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Interested in adding data-yielding beehives to your ESG program?
info@bestbees.com
(617) 445–2322
Sources
Special thanks to Vidushi Patel, Natasha Pauli, Eloise Biggs, Liz Barbour, and Bryan Boruff for researching and writing “Why bees are critical for achieving sustainable development” published by Springer in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Ambio Journal of Environment and Society: 50, 49–59 (2021).
1 “Climate Is Everything” Justin Worland, Time Magazine: April 15, 2021
11 Original data, Noah Wilson-Rich. 2018. How you can help save the bees, one hive at a time: TEDx Provincetown.
17 Original data, Noah Wilson-Rich. 2018. How you can help save the bees, one hive at a time: TEDx Provincetown.
21 T. Schmitt, K. Demary, and N. Wilson-Rich. 2021. “Urban Beekeeping as a Tool for STEAM Education.” Chapter 10: Teaching and Learning in Urban Agricultural Community Contexts. I. DeCoito et al. (eds.). Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
