Oscar-nominated actor gave up his ranch to save the bees

Saturday, October 31, 2015, 4:59 PM - Little over a year after announcing his venture to save the bees, Morgan Freeman's "Air Bee n' Bee" is making rounds in the news once more.

In mid-2014, the 78-year-old actor talked to Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon about converting his 124-acre Mississippi ranch into a bee sanctuary.

Freeman took in bees from Arkansas last year, starting them on a diet of "two parts sugar, one part water."

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His initiative is resurfaced by social activism group The Free Thought Project, in an effort to raise awareness about the declining bee population.

Freeman originally planned to house 26 hives of bees on his ranch.

"There’s a concerted effort to bring bees back onto the planet. We do not realize that they are the foundation, I think, of the growth of the planet, the vegetation. I have so many flowering things, and I have a gardener too," Freeman said in an interview with MNN.

"Because [my gardener] takes care of the bees too, all she does is figure out, ‘OK, what would they like to have?’, so we’ve got acres and acres of clover, we’re planting stuff like lavender, I’ve got like, maybe 140 magnolia trees, big blossoms," Freeman added.

Bees are a vital part of the food chain, pollinating 70 out of 100 crops that feed 90 per cent of the world, the BBC notes.

If bees go extinct, there's also a likelihood of losing all the plants that bees pollinate, and all of the animals that eat those plants would go as a result, the publication adds.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Andreas, Flickr.

SOURCES: ET Canada | BBC | MNN