A love letter to the earth, Rays of sunshine, warm with nectar A honey bee’s daydream. Sunflowers: Each sunflower head contains thousands of tiny florets that provide protein-rich pollen—key for bee nutrition and colony health. Sunflowers’ abundant nectar is an ideal energy and nutrition source for honey bees. Bees transform this nectar into the honey we love—honey that is also essential for our planet’s survival.
Sunflowers are one of the Earth’s most important clean-up flowers. Scientists call them hyperaccumulators; a New York Times article referred to them as “toxic avengers with leaves.” These happy flowers are over-the-top-resilient and thrive in highly toxic soils, including those riddled with dangerous metals and radiation. As sunflowers grow, their roots absorb and remove poisons. They’ve been used to clear radiation from the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disaster sites and lead from industrial sites in the U.S.
I just love sunflowers.
