Beezie

The United States bee population is rapidly declining. Most beekeepers are losing 70% of their hives due to an unexplained disease referred to only as Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD. Bees pollinate more than $14 billion worth of crops such as apples, soybeans, peaches, cucumbers, cranberries, blueberries and almonds to name only a few. We get 1/3 of our food from crops pollinated by honeybees. If this calculation is expanded to include indirect products, such as the milk and beef from cattle fed on alfalfa, pollinators may be responsible for almost $40 billion worth of agricultural products each year.

Because of the disappearance of our little bee friends, Anthropologie decided to focus our windows on the problem in order to raise awareness with our customers.  Not only are our windows dedicated to them, but we have specific products which have a percentage of their proceeds going to help with research.

For some more info on this you can go to a few different websites:

• http://www.helpthehoneybees.com/
• http://savethebees.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
• google it.

I got to work like a busy little worker bee building honeycomb for our windows…

We wrote little facts about the bees all around the store on our windows as well as painted extra honeycombs on the windows.

I love how modern the painted honeycomb look!  I’m a sucker for geometric shapes and patterns so I loved this.

The coolest part was the we built a HUGE bee hive inside…it’s about 8 feet tall!!  It’s growing out of one of our skylights.

There was a TON of time and work put into this hive–I couldn’t have done it without my 3 wonderful interns, a lovely friend, and the other girls on my team!

Not only do we have some fun bee products, but there were little magical honey touches hidden in jars–real honey, honeycomb cereal, honey packets, bit-o-honey candies, etc.

To help support the bees, you can head to an Anthropologie on Earth Day–April 22–and buy a bee tee designed by Edun!