IN BRIEF A game fit for World Bee Day

One of the neat things about doing a weekly review you can go off on a tangent once in a while.

This will be one of those times, although we’ll get to a game before we are finished, so just read on.

In case you are not aware May 20 is World Bee Day.

“World Bee Day is a day of awareness about the importance of honey bees and why we need to protect them and other such pollinators,” explains www.twinkl.ca

“Designated by the United Nations, World Bee Day seeks to inform and educate people about honey bees and their impact on our biodiversity.

“For example, it is estimated that one out of every three mouthfuls of food we eat depends on honey bees and the pollination process.

“But honey bees are facing extinction, with a 2021 report by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Bombus Pollinators Association of Law Students finding that American honey

THE MEEPLE GUILD (YORKTON)

meeple.guild@gmail.com bees had decreased by some 89 per cent.

“World Bee Day is a day of awareness about the harmful effects of pesticides, climate change, and habitat loss on honey beesand what we can do to reverse this.”

So now we mark World Bee Day each May 20. The date was chosen as World Bee Day by the United Nations in honor of the birthday of Anton Janša, the pioneer of beekeeping in the 18th century.”

Again from the website, “World Bee Day is a relatively recent holiday. This is in response to the ongoing climate change crisis, with more bee species than ever before being reported to be facing extinction in the past 10 years. As a result, the committee of Slovenia appealed to the United Nations in 2017 to honor World Bee Day. In December of the same year, the United Nations approved the proposal, naming May 20 as International World Bee Day, with the first event taking place in 2018. In 2023, World Bee Day will celebrate its fifth anniversary.”

So as a way to focus your mind on the importance of -- and the plight of as well – of the bee, why not play a bee-related game on the 20th. There are several including relatively new offerings such as Honey Buzz, and the one we will discuss here Beez.

Beez comes from Next Move Games, a publish- er best known for the now near classic Azul, and its variant releases such as Summer Pavilion, Stained Glass of Sintra and Queen’s Garden, as well as Reef, a recent addition to our collection that is excellent too.

Beez, from designer Dan Halstad was released in 2020, and has players taking on the role of bees out collecting nectar to make honey. Here you even get awesome little bee pieces to move around