Our History and Mission
The Honeybee Conservancy was founded in 2009 by Guillermo Fernandez in response to the news that bees across the globe were in crisis. In the fall of 2020, The Honeybee Conservancy relaunched as The Bee Conservancy to better capture our work protecting all bees and securing environmental and food justice through education, research, habitat creation, and advocacy.
As a child immigrant from Cuba, Guillermo grew up in a crowded, multi-ethnic urban area where one-third of the community lived in poverty. His neighborhood, like so many others, was a food desert; fresh fruit and vegetables were near impossible to find, supermarkets stocked mostly processed food, and local restaurants were all fast food chains. There was little-to-no green space, just concrete as far as the eye could see, and the community suffered from rampant health issues that were the result of poor nutrition and degraded environment.
Decades later, Guillermo started The Honeybee Conservancy for two reasons. First, he wanted to help save the bees, who pollinate 1 in 3 bites of food we eat and are vital to healthy ecology. Second, he hoped to find ways to empower underserved communities like the one he grew up in to produce healthy food and build green spaces.
For more than ten years, we have partnered with community groups, schools, foundations, and corporate teams to inspire environmental stewardship, build and distribute bee habitats, and improve access to conservation strategies and education. We empower people from all walks of life to advance pollinator and ecological security through our core program pillars — Bee Sanctuaries, Education, Habitat Development, and Community Science. The environmental inequities that affect underserved urban communities mean access to top-tier environmental training, education, and ecological remediation is exponentially vital —– yet disproportionately out of reach — in these areas. For this reason, The Bee Conservancy emphasizes increasing access to learning and training opportunities to drive change and cultivate stewardship and resilience in vulnerable neighborhoods.
Key Milestones
- Weekend Stewardship: Our Governors Island Bee Sanctuary Site opens every Saturday and Sunday from May through October to the public, welcoming around 4,000 visitors. In addition, we offered ~25 free special events on-site, including pollinator walks, tours, habitat lessons, hive demonstrations, and volunteer days. (Sadly, several days and special events were rained out due to an exceptionally rainy summer.)
- World Bee Day NYC: TBC welcomes several hundred visitors to our second annual World Bee Day on May 20th on Governors Island for fun and educational activities with our Urban Farm partners Earth Matter and GrowNYC, and sponsor Zarbee’s. Special guests include the Brooklyn United Marching Band.
- World Bee Day United Nations: Executive Director Rebecca Louie speaks to a global audience about TBC programming and the vital role of bees in building ecology and communities for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Bees and Other Pollinators: Building Resilience, Supporting Communities event.
- Advocacy: In partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council, TBC continues to advocate for the passage of The Birds and Bees Protection Act in New York State. We speak at a press conference in Albany, attend in-person and online meetings with legislators, and promote letter-writing and petition-signing campaigns. After several years of hard work across a dedicated coalition of concerned groups and individuals, Governor Kathy Hochul signs the Act into law on December 22, 2023.
- Habitat Development: TBC collaborates closely with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ) teams at Liberty Park, Port Newark, Port Jersey, Port Ivory, Staten Island Bridges, and the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, creating custom season-over-season native planting guides and maintenance strategies. By end of year, 1,500 new perennial native plants areminstalled, including the new 9/11 Memorial Garden at Port Newark. Five of six sites are registered as Monarch Waystations.
- Monitoring and Data Collection: While performing monthly habitat assessment and pollinator monitoring protocols at our PANYNJ gardens, TBC spots a rare bumblebee, Bombus fervidus (the golden northern bumble bee or yellow bumblebee) at Port Ivory, one of nine bumble bee species currently on the New York Natural Heritage Program Rare Species List. Bombus Fervidus is also spotted at our Bee Sanctuary on Governors Island. Monarch caterpillars and butterflies are observed on new milkweed plants.
- Food Security: Our first cohort of Food Justice Awardees completes the Beekeeping Essentials training with Cornell University, installs two hives, and receives ongoing mentorship from TBC staff.
- Training and Education: TBC launches a second cohort of our Master Beekeeper Award, providing six scholarships to Cornell University’s 15-month certification program. Our first cohort of candidates completes training and takes field and written exams.
- Training and Education: TBC’s first cohort of Beginner Beekeepers completes the Beekeeping Essentials training with Cornell University and receives ongoing mentorship and support from TBC staff.
- Training the Trainer: To amplify bee stewardship education in a range of community settings, TBC co-hosts a public talk with Battery Park City Authority, a webinar for The Central Park Conservancy volunteer team, and two on-site sessions as part of the Staten Island Zoo’s community science program for middle school teachers.
- Educational Field Trips: TBC hosts two field trips at our Bee Sanctuary on Governors Island with the City Parks Foundation Green Girls. This program inspires middle school girls to excel as environmental scientists and stewards. Participants gained an understanding of vital local pollinators through a guided walk and hive demonstration, discovered a diversity of native bee habitats, and discussed the importance of bees for our ecosystems.
- Sanctuary Events: TBC led five educational events across our Sanctuary sites, including Prospect Park Zoo, Staten Island Zoo, and Hell’s Kitchen Rooftop Farm, to bring interactive bee and habitat education to groups and families across the city.
- Community Webinars: TBC launches our seasonal educational webinars for our awardee community with two educational programs for and by our awardee community. Topics included native bees, habitat development, bee behavior, biology, and research.
- World Bee Day: TBC welcomes several hundred visitors to our first World Bee Day celebration on Governors Island. This educational day of family-friendly fun included Urban Farm partners Earth Matter, GrowNYC, and sponsor Zarbee’s.
- Habitat Development: TBC partners with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) to create habitat for native bees at Liberty Park at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. We celebrated the gardens with over 40 Girl Scouts of NYC and their families with an interactive performance of the reproductive life cycle of a mason bee, arts and crafts, and the installation of cavity bee homes.
- Habitat Development: Fueled by our Liberty Park successes and a grant from the New York Community Trust, TBC expands work with the (PANYNJ) to create pollinator corridors on Port Authority land, meeting with site managers in Brooklyn, Staten Island, Newark, and Jersey City to identify opportunities and strategies for 2023.
- TBC launches our Food Justice Award to provide training, supplies, and ongoing mentorship to community gardens and urban farms in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to advance food security in underserved areas.
- TBC launches our Beginner Beekeeper Award program to provide best-in-class beekeeping education to educational, food security, and environmental groups.
- Stewardship: TBC welcomes over 3,000 visitors to our flagship Bee Sanctuary on Governors Island, teaching the public the importance of bees in our ecosystems with talks, demonstrations, tours, and hands-on teaching tools.
- Partner Events: TBC co-hosts ~20 educational events at our Bee Sanctuary sites at zoos and urban farms and with community partners, including Seward Park Conservancy, Battery Park City Authority, and NYC Parks GreenThumb. Events include an educational talk with local NYC gardeners, a family-friendly pollinator walk, tabling, hive demonstrations, and more.
- Advocacy: TBC publishes an op-ed in the New York Daily News on the importance of pollinators and the necessity of the Birds and Bees Protection Act, which curbs the use of neonics in New York State.
- Online Education: TBC hosts public webinars on building pollinator habitat, the dangers of neonicotinoids, and spring behavior for honey and native bees.
- TBC adds program roles and partners with LifeSci to provide internship opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students in NYC universities and colleges.
- Advocacy: Executive Director Rebecca Louie provided live testimony before the Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee in Albany, NY, to advocate for the passage of the Birds and Bees Protection Act, which would curb the use of neonicotinoid pesticides in New York state.
- TBC serves thousands of individuals with programming, ecology, and food growth at our Bee Sanctuaries.
- TBC awards 460 bee houses sustainably designed for bee health (handcrafted at Brooklyn Woods, which trains low-income individuals for woodworking careers) to 370 community, nonprofit, environmental, food justice, and educational groups across the U.S. and Canada.
- TBC offers three scholarships to eCornell’s prestigious Master Beekeeping Certificate program.
- Advocacy: TBC joins forces with the Natural Resources Defense Council to curb harmful neonicotinoid insecticides in New York State.
- Education: TBC creates the Always Bee Learning series and launches with Hive Jobs, an adorable and educational cut-and-color activity sheet for kids showcasing a few of the many roles a honey bee plays throughout its life in the colony
- TBC gets a lot of media buzz in The New York Times, Forbes, TreeHugger.com and more, as well as celebrity shout outs on The Drew Barrymore Show and from Ashton Kutcher’s APlus media.
- TBC announces our 2022 From the Ground Up campaign, which is focused on protecting ground-dwelling bees, which comprise 70% of the world’s 20,000 bee species.
- TBC adds an operations manager, development director, apiary manager, and community science coordinator to our team to expand TBC’s mission.
- THBC’s team grows with the addition of Rebecca Louie as Managing Director.
- THBC opens a Bee Sanctuary at the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn.
- The COVID-19 pandemic impacts three apiaries, as location hours are severely restricted and beekeepers refrain from using public transportation: Central Park Zoo, Governors Island, Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project (opening postponed)
- Google partners with The Honeybee Conservancy to develop a Google Doodle game about the humble honeybee.
- The Honeybee Conservancy relaunches as The Bee Conservancy in October to better capture our work and mission to protect all bee species.
- Eataly NYC launches a honey-themed rooftop restaurant Serra D’Autunno and donates proceeds to The Bee Conservancy
- THBC gifts the Empire State Building beehive, designed by COOKFOX Architects, to HKP in honor of THBC’s 10-Year Anniversary.
- Bee Sanctuaries open at the Queens Zoo, Central Park Zoo, and Staten Island Zoo.
- THBC beekeepers begin managing the hives at International Relief Committee’s New Roots Community Farm in the South Bronx.
- THBC’s Beekeeping Apprenticeship, a 15-week training program, launches at our training apiary at the Queens Zoo.
- BeeBlitz, a citizen science event that invites people to photograph pollinators in public green spaces and share them to the iNaturalist app to provide data to global scientists.
- THBC appears on Bravo’s smash hit Project Runway’s “What Do You Care About” episode, as the inspiration for designer Garo Sparo’s dress and t-shirt creations.
- THBC and Earth Matter host Lavender Festival on Governors Island at NYC’s only lavender garden
- New York Times published “The New York Times Magazine publishes The Insect Apocalypse is Here, which details the largely unnoticed collapse of bee and other insect populations worldwide.
- THBC’s Bee Sanctuary on Governors Island opens.
- THBC delivers its 200th native bee home or honey bee hive.
- U.S. puts a North American bee on the endangered species list for the first time: the rusty patched bumble bee.
- A report by the Center for Biological Diversity shows that of the 4,000+ known species of native North American and Hawaiian bees, over half the species with available data are declining, and 1 in 4 is at growing risk of extinction.
- The United Nations proclaims May 20 as World Bee Day.
- The Bee Sanctuary at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City opens.
- TBC produces Abuzz! News From The Hive, a fun, educational magazine that teaches children about environmental stewardship and the lives of bees. The Abuzz! Educator’s Guide accompanies it.
- The United States Department of Agriculture states that the honeybee die-off threatens nearly 100 commercial crops worth $15 billion.
- Seven species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees are officially added to the U.S. endangered species list for federal protection.
- Sponsor-a-Hive begins distributing native bee houses alongside honeybee hives.
- THBC delivers its 100th native bee home or honey bee hive.
- Research is released that shows that climate change is causing habitat loss across North America and Europe as bumblebees fail to migrate to cooler areas and establish new hives.
- Our flagship program, Sponsor-a-Hive launches and places 15 honeybee hives in community gardens, school gardens, and urban farms across 10 states.
- THBC participates in educational events around NYC including Harvest Fest at The Battery.
- THBC’s Bee Sanctuary at the Cathedral St. John the Divine opens with a ‘Blessing of the Bees’ from the Bishop.
- Hurricane Sandy sweeps away two beehives at The Battery.
- THBC hosts the NYC screening of More than Honey, a 2012 documentary that examines the relationship between humans and bees, and explores the possible causes of CCD.
- THBC’s first Bee Sanctuary opens at The Battery.
- Silence of the Bees (March 2011) is a part of PBS’ groundbreaking Nature television series, exploring Colony Collapse Disorder and bringing supplementary bee lesson plans into the classroom.
- The American Museum of Natural History announces the discovery of eleven new species of bees, including four from New York City and its suburbs.
- Urban beekeeping legalized in New York City in March of 2010.
- Guillermo completes urban beekeeping training and searches for an apiary location. He’s rejected by many gardens across the densely populated city. Eventually, The Battery Conservancy, now known as The Battery, welcomes him to keep beehives at their location at the southern tip of Manhattan.
- THBC partners with The Art Institute of NYC to create a series of PSAs to raise awareness about the plight of bees.
- A United Nations report, “How to Feed the World in 2050”, shares that globally, 815 million people are hungry today; an additional 2 billion people are expected to be undernourished by 20501. In order to feed this growing population, food production must increase 70%.
- Catalyzed by the reports of CCD and the belief that individual beekeepers can help declining honeybee populations, Guillermo began urban beekeeping training and founded The Honeybee Conservancy as a project of the nonprofit Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs.
- THBC hosts a screening of Vanishing of the Bees.
- U.S. farmers told a U.S. House Agriculture subcommittee that the bee crisis could result in up to a ten-fold increase in food prices.
- The American Museum of Natural History determines there are more than 19,200 described bee species – this outnumbers mammal and bird species combined. This is the first global accounting of bee species in over a hundred years, and adds 2,000 species to the list (an increase of 11%).
- Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) first reported, bringing the plight of honeybees to the world’s attention.
- An Inconvenient Truth, featuring former United States Vice President Al Gore, is released to raise international awareness of global warming.