Tough bees! You’re getting a sticker anyway just because we care.

Our very talented friend and Raleigh artist David Eichenberger drew our sweet Apiopolis bee. It will look so good on your window, bumper, bicycle, skateboard, notebook, laptop, cell phone case that you'll probably want to give it kisses every day! So maybe you should put it on your bathroom mirror. Love bees and yourself, yo.

You know how Raleigh was just certified as a Bee City USA and their founder Phyllis Stiles says the single most important thing you can do to help pollinators is to plant healthy habitat? Well, our native seed mix has been carefully selected for the southeast. It would be beautiful in a natural border or edge planting, or heck, if you're bored to tears and weary of the gluttonous mundanity of your lawn, you can start to transform it now! Y'know, I read about a homeowner/ecologist experiment where the dude stopped mowing his single species lawn and in just a few years had over 375 plant species including ones that were endangered! Nature loves diversity and abhors a vacuum, y'all. There's nothing more vacuous than turf. This mix is eco-region appropriate, genetically diverse and has maximum viability. It contains a mix of native, multi-seasonal flowering plant and grass species propagated from seed collected in North Carolina and Virginia. Let's get wild!

Well, unless you have five dogs to pick up after or a kitty litter box to scoop, you'd better be using canvas shopping bags. When we were deciding on the rewards, we unanimously agreed that WE LOVE CANVAS TOTES and on top of being bee ladies, we're also bag ladies to our cores because books and apples and beeswax lip balm and stuff. And yes, they've got our bee on them so you can join us in the bee and bag club and we'll even let you in if you're no lady.

These photographs were taken by our very own amazing Apiopolis photographers and members, Wendy Kanable, Cat Valand and Uli Gratzl. They're so beautiful! It was impossible to to choose just one so we chose four and that was impossible too. The packet includes 3 cards of each image. We wish we were on your address list!

You guessed it! The Apiopolis bee is hanging out on the most comfy t-shirt ever printed by our friends at Aardvark. You know you're in a quality place if somebody named Roscoe greets you with a good shoe sniffing when you enter. If you ever have occasion to swing by their shop, tuck a chicken treat in your pocket for our buddy, please.

So here's the thing. We're all about collaborating and having spent so much time with our bee friends, we believe, like them, that together we're so much better. When we were thinking about what rewards to offer, we decided they could be another opportunity to support and share some of the amazing talents of our friends in the community and because it's an iFundWomen campaign, we asked some of our favorite local ladies if they'd help us. Our beloved and beautiful in all ways Jenny is a brilliant artist, teacher and has the sweetest heart. Her work makes us weep and gasp and hold our breath and offer our sweat or souls in trade. She led the mural painting at the Big Boss Secret Bee Garden and always says yes so generously and graciously. We've already called dibs on the first of these prints so y'all better hustle to get yours.

See above. That's right. More opportunities to enjoy the talented work of women in our community and get a little piece of functional magic of your very own. And I'm happy and sorry to tell you that you have to choose between three of them. This would be terrible torture for me. The ladies that call the pottery studio at 1201 West Lenoir Street in Boylan Heights contacted me last year and said

You know that Morphine song

Sweet Jayne. The Cowboy Junkies version. The first time I walked into Jayne's studio on a First Friday and glanced at the gorgeous work hanging on the walls, I knew it was beeswax. So tactile and fragrant. We chatted for a while and then a year later she created an entire exhibit around bees. It was incredible. She called it Inter-Depend-Dance and raffled not one but two pieces to support the work of Apiopolis. Jayne joined me at two apiaries to visit with the bees. She told me one of my now favorite quotes by Gary Snyder,

Local artist hand crafted bee engraving for your pollinator garden. More details coming!

Adopt a beehive and a field of wildflowers! We are collaborating with a local preserve to establish sustainable apiaries and restore large-scale pollinator habitat. You'll get naming rights to the hive, images and monthly updates on the behind the scenes secret life of bees and the plants they forage on. And if you ever feel like visiting them in person, we'll bring an extra hat and veil.

Whenever it's your time, you will go to a breezy, blue sky summer day heaven filled with sunshine and wildflowers and flitting butterflies and buzzing bees and birdsong and the gold will be honey and there will be milk but maybe from milkweed because monarchs and Jesus and the angels and we will love you forever and tell the bees stories about you and your giant, generous heart.