The Guam Beekeepers Association celebrated World Bee Day recently at the Chamorro Village Night Market. Local beekeepers displayed their wares, sharing sweet honey and imparting a serious message about our important pollinators.

The honeybees were all the buzz, as the beekeepers association shared local honey, selling their wares and raising awareness about these important pollinators. Guam Beekeepers Association founder and state entomologist Chris Rosario told KUAM News, "World Bee Day is an event to celebrate all pollinators, starting with honeybees to even butterflies, and it's just recognizing and educating the folks. That’s really what Guam Beekeepers Association is all about."

May 20th is designated as World Bee Day by the United Nations, with this year’s theme being “Bee Inspired By Nature To Nourish Us All.”

Master beekeeper Paul Packbier is the president of the Beekeepers Association, and said, "There’s some studies that show if you have some honeybees near your farm, if it's a farm product like mangoes, tomatoes or cucumbers that need to be pollinated and if there are honeybees around, you can see the increase of 70 to 80 percent of your crops. So that’s a pretty good incentive for farmers to embrace beekeepers. And as beekeepers, we are farmers, too."

The community came out for the sweet celebration, but with a serious message, as Rosario said, "The biggest threat right now that we face as beekeepers is a pest called the Greater Banded Hornet. I know we've had this covered many, many times, but we stress the importance of the community reporting nests so that we come out, kill the nests, and we actually save a lot of apiaries around that nest. Before that though, the biggest threat was actually humans in which they would call the pest control company. But now the pest control companies see the importance of bees and they actually refer those calls to the beekeepers association, which is wonderful."

The number one bee killer worldwide is varroa mites, but luckily they haven’t made their way to the island. It’s what makes Guam honey truly special.

Packbier added, "I’ve sent Guam honey to a blind taste test event in San Francisco and won for the Pacific region. So Guam honey is very special. We don’t treat our hives because, again, we don’t have varroa mites– so the honey is very pure, very special and they taste great."