From the founders
The FAO's theme this year is Bee Together for People and the Planet: a partnership that sustains us all, which is generous and accurate framing, and also a lot to put on a single hashtag.
So… we did a tour.
We called a third-generation queen breeder in Northern California, sat down with a school teacher in Texas who is building a beekeeping program from the ground up, and pulled together four more profiles from across the world: our own founders in the Italian Alps, a long-time collaborator in the Negev Desert, and a Canadian engineer designing hives that float when the floods come.
What we kept hearing, across the six conversations, was that the partnership the FAO is asking us to mark is showing up most clearly at the extremes. The longest legacies. The smallest scales. The hardest climates. The newest equipment. The point where people who have given decades to this work are quietly figuring out how to keep doing it.
We’re super excited to share it with you.
Happy World Bee Day!
— The Primal Bee Team
Bee Together: how humans and bees actually live together in 2026
Today, May 20, somewhere around 11,000 beekeepers in Slovenia are marking World Bee Day with school visits, public lectures, hive openings, and a UN-affiliated international forum in Maribor that the FAO is co-hosting and broadcasting in English. They are far from alone. From Tokyo rooftops to Texas classrooms, beekeepers in nearly every country on earth are stepping outside today to do the work, mark the day, and quietly remind the rest of us how much of the food on the table comes from a partnership most people never see.
The day exists because Slovenia spent three years walking a proposal through the UN General Assembly until it was unanimously adopted in December 2017. Eight years on, the partnership the FAO is asking us to mark has gotten harder, and also more interesting. The 2024-2025 winter brought the worst US colony losses on record. Honey adulteration is gutting the wholesale price of the real thing. Climate change is reshaping bloom timing in places that have done this work for generations. And yet, in apiary after apiary, the people who have given decades to this are still figuring out how to keep doing it, and a new generation of engineers, teachers, and advocates is joining them.
So for World Bee Day this year, we wanted to spend some time with the people who are doing the work to solve some of these problems firsthand.
We called six of them, in six landscapes, working at completely different scales.
A third-generation queen breeder in Northern California whose advice to anyone still in the field is endure the suck (in an inspirational way, we promise).
A school teacher in Texas who is teaching kindergartners to recognize trophallaxis.
Two Italian childhood friends we might know really well who spent three winters losing every colony they had in the Alps before they ever built the company that's publishing this piece.
A Ukrainian-born beekeeper in the Negev Desert running an apiary that doesn't need to be treated for Varroa.
A Canadian engineer designing hives that float up off the ground when the floods come.
And the Slovenian PhD who got May 20 on the UN calendar in the first place.
Plus, a few more amazing beekeepers in your own backyard that we'd be remiss not to point to on the way out.
🐝 Why is a bee called a bee? NPR asked an etymologist, and the honest answer is we don't really know.
🇨🇱 Honey adulteration is now serious enough that the International Atomic Energy Agency is involved.
👑 The hive is less a monarchy than a co-op with a hormone budget.
🌸 "Busy bee" is officially an understatement.
For World Bee Day, we're highlighting the photos beekeepers in our community have been sending in from around the world this year.
Got a hive of your own? We want to see it! Drop a photo in the Primal Bee Facebook group or tag us. We're collecting them for a global gallery 🐝
Until next time
Today's a good day to send this piece to someone in your life who has ever asked you, with genuine curiosity, why you keep bees.
If you're one of the beekeepers we wrote about, or you know one we should be writing about next, hit reply. We're already thinking about who to call for next year's piece, and the best leads come from this list.
Happy World Bee Day,
The Primal Bee Team 🐝