--- title: Saving the Bees: The Government Pays For Flowers description: A new program at the USDA will pay farmers and ranchers to plant bee-friendly crops. It's about time canonical: https://time.com/10390/bees-government-pays-flowers/ author: Bryan Walsh article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-02-26T22:13:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T06:30:50.953Z article:section: Science og:title: Saving the Bees: The Government Pays For Flowers og:description: A new program at the USDA will pay farmers and ranchers to plant bee-friendly crops. It's about time og:url: https://time.com/10390/bees-government-pays-flowers/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7ed513740ac518a9/6986835e169ab00156278067/142201-honeybee-virus-ccd.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1499 og:image:height: 843 og:image:alt: Honeybees og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Saving the Bees: The Government Pays For Flowers twitter:description: A new program at the USDA will pay farmers and ranchers to plant bee-friendly crops. It's about time twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7ed513740ac518a9/6986835e169ab00156278067/142201-honeybee-virus-ccd.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Uncle Sam Is Helping to Feed the Honeybees > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement.  by [Bryan Walsh](https://time.com/author/bryan-walsh/)  ## Bryan Walsh Feb 26, 2014 10:13 PM UTC  Getty Images  by [Bryan Walsh](https://time.com/author/bryan-walsh/)  ## Bryan Walsh Feb 26, 2014 10:13 PM UTC When I wrote a cover story last August about the [plight of the honeybees](http://science.time.com/2013/08/09/the-trouble-with-beekeeping-in-the-anthropocene/), I didn’t think I’d still be talking about it half a year later. Yet this afternoon I went down to Washington to address a meeting of the National Garden Club—and the topic, of course, was honeybees. I wish I’d had better news to offer. Scientists still don’t know exactly why rates of honeybee loss [have been so high](http://science.time.com/2014/01/22/plant-virus-may-cause-colony-collapse-disorder-in-bees/) in recent years, though there has been some promising research identifying new viruses. Beekeepers are still under tremendous economic pressure to keep their hives going in the face of colony collapse disorder (CCD). And the country, as I wrote last year, is still inhospitable to honeybees, lacking the wild spaces and flowers that feed them. But on that last bit, at least, there’s some good news. This week the U.S. Department of Agriculture [announced](http://usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2014/02/0028.xml&navid=NEWS%5FRELEASE&navtype=RT&parentnav=LATEST%5FRELEASES&edeployment%5Faction=retrievecontent) a $3 million program to provide assistance to farmers and ranchers in the Midwest interested in helping out honeybees by planting bee-friendly forage in and around their plots. That includes reseeding pastures with alfalfa, clover and other plants that are good for bees—and for livestock as well. Ranchers will also be able to draw on the money to build fences and make other changes that allow them to move their livestock from pasture to pasture, to prevent the vegetation from getting worn down. The idea is to turn the farms back into a buffet for honeybees. The states covered will be Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and both North and South Dakota, chosen because 65% of the country’s estimated 30,000 commercial beekeepers store their hives there for at least part of the year. (Commercial beekeepers [are an itinerant lot](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/migratory-beekeeping-mind-boggling-math/), moving their colonies from state to state as they chase pollination contracts.) Commodity crop farmers will be able to use the money to plant bee forage along the borders of their fields—vital, given that the spread of monocultures and soybeans offer very little nutrition for bees on their own. Such higher quality food will help honeybees battle the toxic mix of pesticides and parasites that have been wearing down their populations, as the USDA’s David Epstein [told the AP:](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/usda-spending-3m-feed-honeybees-midwest) --- > “” --- A $3 million outlay by itself won’t be enough to stop the onslaught of colony collapse disorder. But like the growth in rooftop and backyard beekeeping—even in crowded cities like Los Angeles and New York—it will help. **(MORE:** [**Can Urban Beekeeping Stop the Beepocalypse?**](http://science.time.com/2014/02/13/can-urban-beekeeping-stop-the-beepocalypse/)**)** ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/10390/bees-government-pays-flowers/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/10390/bees-government-pays-flowers/"},"headline":"How Uncle Sam Is Helping to Feed the Honeybees","datePublished":"2014-02-26T22:13:06.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T06:30:50.953Z","description":"A new program at the USDA will pay farmers and ranchers to plant bee-friendly crops. 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