Yesterday, legendary actor Morgan Freeman celebrated his 84th birthday.
And while his smooth voice and unassailable cool has made us love him just as much as his performances have, it looks like we’ve found another reason to celebrate the impact he’s made.
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But this time, it’s not for something he’s doing on screen but in his own backyard. And it sounds like a major undertaking.
Back in 2014, Freeman appeared on *The Tonight Show* and told Jimmy Fallon that he just started taking up beekeeping two weeks prior.
As Forbes reported , he converted his 124-acre ranch in Mississippi into a bee sanctuary after importing 26 hives from Arkansas.
And he intended it to be nothing but a sanctuary as he wasn’t planning to extract any honey or disrupt the hives in any way.
Instead, he was motivated by a passion to protect wild bee populations, which in turn has massive implications for conserving the world’s food sources and ecosystems.
As he put it, “There is a concerted effort for bringing bees back onto the planet […] We do not realize that they are the foundation, I think, of the growth of the planet, the vegetation.”
What he does do is ensure that his bees are regularly fed and that they have an environment that makes life as easy as possible for them.
According to Forbes , he feeds the bees a mixture of sugar and water while also filling his ranch with plants that best accommodate them such as lavender, magnolia trees, and various clovers.
And even by the time of his *Tonight Show* appearance, Freeman discovered something fascinating about his experience with the bees.
In his words , “What I’ve discovered is I don’t have to put on a bee suit or anything.”
Despite this choice, he said he hadn’t been stung yet so it seems the bees like him just as much as he likes them.
And considering that an article published in Science identified parasites, pesticides, and habitat loss as serious threats all working against the bees, they need all the help they can get.
h/t: Forbes
Last Updated on June 2, 2021 by Mason Joseph Zimmer
