Honey bees can show us the power to be found in thinking small, says beekeeper Marianne Gee.

New month. New day. New leaf. So you’ve woken up and decided you’re finally going to take on the big, big problem that’s been weighing on you — perhaps it’s shoring up your public libraries, helping homeless dogs and cats, or fighting climate change.

Yet as much as you’d like to act, you’re stopped by some persistent, piping doubts: “Where do I start? And even if I do something, will it really matter?”

When it comes to climate change, for instance, the greatest minds in the world are struggling to come up with solutions. Meanwhile, you’re someone who struggles to bring your reusable bags to the store.

But maybe it’s time to look elsewhere for inspiration — like the humble honey bee.

They can show us that thinking small may be the best way to think big, according to beekeeper Marianne Gee, who lives in Ottawa, Canada.

The lifespan of a worker bee ranges from six weeks (in the summer) to twenty weeks (in the winter). Most of her brief existence is spent gathering nectar to make honey.

According to Gee, “a bee in her lifetime makes only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey” — a tiny fraction of the hundred pounds of honey that a typical colony needs to survive. “The most remarkable thing isn’t that she does the work; it’s that she doesn’t even do it for herself,” she adds. A bee won’t directly benefit from the honey she makes; instead, it will allow future generations to thrive after she is gone.

This too is how we can change the world — by not worrying about the size of our contributions and by letting our efforts join the actions of others.

Gee herself was distressed by the pesticides and diseases that were harming the world’s honey bees and ruminated about what she and her husband could possibly do to fix the ailing agricultural system.

One day as she was tending her hives, she realized, “I am insignificant, but my 1/12 of a teaspoon counts.” She found purpose in starting an urban farm, helping people plant garden plots on their rooftops and schoolyards, and teaching novice beekeepers.

Keep making honey. Your 1/12th of a teaspoon counts.

Watch Marianne Gee’s talk from TEDxKanata here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Halton is Assistant Ideas Editor at TED, and a science journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

How much do you know about the tiny, mighty bees? Here are 8 facts worth learning about our formidable friends:

1. Bees make our surroundings beautiful. In addition to pollinating our crops, bees are responsible for pollinating all of the things that make spring sing. And they’re no novices — they’ve been producing honey from flowering trees (fruit trees, nut trees, and beyond) for 10-20 million years! [Source: The case of the vanishing honeybees.]

2. Bees are social insects. Honey bees live together in large, well-organized family groups and engage in a variety of complex tasks not practiced by solitary insects. Communication, complex nest construction, environmental control, defense, and division of the labor are just some of the behaviors that honey bees have developed to exist successfully in social colonies. And they are not the least bit lazy: one single bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day. [Source: The case of the vanishing honeybees.]

3. Bees are above words. They communicate through ‘dance’ and pheromones. By performing what’s referred to as the ‘waggle dance’, bees can share information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations. [Source: Why do honeybees love hexagons?]

4. Bees make great wingmen. Bees are very busy little matchmakers. The bees’ side of the whole “birds and the bees” business is to help plants find mates and reproduce. Today, around 170,000 plant species receive pollination services from more than 200,000 pollinator species, a good many of which are bees! In return, flowering plants are an abundant and diverse food source for pollinators. For instance, fossil records suggest that bees may have evolved from wasps that gave up hunting after they acquired a taste for nectar. [Source: How bees help plants have sex.]

5. Bees put food on our tables. Bees pollinate crops on an industrial scale, generating over one-third of US food production. Their work alone has contributed an estimated $15-20 billion of value to the US agricultural business. [Source: The case of the vanishing honeybees.]

6. Bees can totally pack up a car better than you. Honeybees are some of nature’s finest mathematicians. Not only can they calculate angles and comprehend the roundness of the earth, these smart insects build and live in one of the most mathematically efficient architectural designs around: the beehive. Charles Darwin himself wrote that the honeycomb is a masterpiece of engineering. It is “absolutely perfect in economizing labor and wax.” [Source: Why do honeybees love hexagons?]

7. Bees are hooked on coffee, too. When bees pollinate coffee plants, they consume low doses of caffeine from the coffee flower nectar, which means that bees are **BUZZZZZING** from a caffeine high just like us, AND helping us to get our coffee fix on the daily! [Source: The case of the vanishing honeybees.]

8. Honeybees are disappearing at astonishing rates. Not to be a **buzzkill**, but here’s a not-so-fun fact. In the past decade, the US honeybee population has been decreasing at an alarming and unprecedented rate. Bee mortality rates in commercial production have more than doubled in the last decade, and in 2015, 40% of bee colonies were reported lost in just a single year. There are a variety of factors causing Colony Collapse Disorder, and scientists everywhere are working to prevent further loss of bees. Keep reading to see how you can help. [Source: The case of the vanishing honeybees.]

Love bees as much as we do? Well, let’s give the bees a hand, for real! Plant some bee-friendly flowers and remember, when bees have access to good nutrition, we have access to good nutrition, through their pollination services.

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