Requiem BEE FOR A

Photographer Danny Fulgencio, led by local apiculturists

Brandon and Susan Pollard, explores the honeybee world — at a neighborhood level — its dwindling population and how it all impacts our lives.

Through Zip Code Honey and organic-friendly chefs like Dodds, the Pollards hope to reconnect food consumers with their tiny pollinators. A bee’s death (Above right) Brandon sweeps dead bees off a rooftop. The Pollards’ bee population is nearly impossible to measure. They’re wild animals, after all, whose numbers wax and wane seasonally. Quantifying their pollinators as hives is an arbitrary measure: A queen and a cup of bees is a colony; 60,000 bees in a box with a queen also is a colony. One thing’s for certain: The Pollards are challenged in maintaining the colonies that weren’t wiped out within the last year.

Show and tell At an Earth Day celebration, Susan Pollard is reflected in a glass honeybee display case, one of the teaching tools she uses when advocating on behalf of the bees. Attendees seem struck with a mix of awe and nervous curiosity. Pollard educates them on the crucial importance of bees and how their benefits outweigh their danger. Some observers believe her and some don’t, it appears.