�������

Patrick Hardy, a master beekeeper in the �����о���-based California Master Beekeeper Program, or CAMPB, designed and implemented the world’s first, and so far, only honeybee disaster response team. His creation, a nonprofit called Bee Platoon, is designed to protect honeybees and help beekeepers during natural disasters.

“We help small hobbyist beekeepers evacuate their bees, recover beehives after disasters and help first responders move the swarms,” Hardy said. “Those are the three major planks of what we do.”

In addition to training first responders tasked with moving bee swarms to safety during disasters, Bee Platoon also aims to train regular bystanders to respond safely and effectively in times of emergency.

“I wanted to provide a response for everybody,” Hardy said.

Hardy has experience as an emergency medic in Southern California, and worked as a consultant to the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in the years after Hurricane Katrina.

Now, Hardy specializes in disaster planning, helping people and organizations reconfigure their disaster programs from scratch, rewriting plans and training staff.

Hardy works at a relentless pace. He has written a book, launched a YouTube channel, and appears on 40-50 television channels every year, including news coverage .

Inspiration for Bee Platoon

Another aspect of his work includes the keynotes that he gives around the world, explaining how to prepare for emergencies and how to respond when disaster strikes.

“I’ve always been interested in the intersection between human management and environmental movement,” Hardy said. “How well do human beings interact with the natural environment?”

Hardy was inspired by what he learned from Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize winning book “Guns, Germs, and Steel.”

“I am an autodidact, someone who likes to do large-scale cursory investigations into my interests,” Hardy said. “This book got me interested in man’s interaction with the environment, whether we’re talking about honeybees or viticulture or the cultivation of food.”

Hardy decided to join CAMPB and loved their courses, where he discovered that honeybees are great disaster responders.

“I found a really fun intersection [that combined] disaster management, which is my professional interest, entomology, which is my intellectual interest and beekeeping, which is a practical interest,” Hardy said.

The value of invention

Hardy said that he wanted to create a team of volunteers like Bee Platoon so that he could pursue his interests in tandem with others while serving the community.

“People are going to get trained in something very unique because I’m designing the very first policies and procedures for moving bees during a wildfire,” Hardy said. “By the end of the year, I’m certain we’ll have reached 1,000 volunteers.”

When planning how Bee Platoon would operate, Hardy took inspiration from existing professional procedures in similar and related fields such as firefighting.

“Essentially, what I’m doing is developing policies and procedures for disaster responders, [similar to] how firefighters need to go to a home to do fire suppression and fire attack,” Hardy said.  Instead of firefighters, think of bee responders, and instead of a house fire, think of a hurricane.”

Hardy is confident that his genuine love for invention, in combination with his experience working in related fields, makes for an authentic approach that imbues Bee Platoon with a unique sense of entrepreneurial spirit.

“I decided I’m the kind of personality that’s not like any other kind of disaster professional you’ll ever meet,” Hardy said. “ No one does it like me anywhere in the world, and the reason for that is that I don’t want to follow what other people are doing in other places. I will be the world’s expert in this, in about three years.”

Solidarity in the beekeeping community

As an original endeavor, involvement in Bee Platoon requires a willingness to try new things. On the other hand, the beekeeping community as a whole is already well established.

“[Beekeeping] is a subculture of people who know each other very well,” Hardy said. “One thing I say to people is that there’s beekeepers around the country and when they need assistance, I get to travel and fill that gap.”

Hardy said the beekeeping community is insular but highly compassionate towards members within itself, as individuals can bond over their shared love for honeybees and hives.

“I found people who, even though their homes were destroyed, still wanted to protect their hives,” Hardy said.

Understanding each other’s passion for beekeeping, community members are willing to help each other even in times of crisis.

“Walking around the scene [of a natural disaster], I found groups of people who were stronger than people thought they were,” Hardy said. “I saw beekeepers demonstrate a genuine altruistic interest in getting other people’s hives recovered and that insularity is such that they want to help each other.”

Hardy said that the solidarity between members of the beekeeping community towards each other may be encouraged by the esoteric nature of the hobby.

“I think what you’ll find is that this is true in a lot of these communities centered around unusual interests, [such as] in the law enforcement community and sub-communities like Comic-Con and Star Wars,” Hardy said. “There’s a recognition that it’s unusual, so they band together with other iconoclastic people like themselves. These folks know who they are and they want to find like-minded people like themselves.”

Human responsibility for honeybees

Hardy was inspired by the displays of solidarity that he encountered in the beekeeping community. He takes no salary for Bee Platoon, being motivated instead by a desire to preserve humanity’s coexistence with the natural environment.

“We can’t throw away our pollinators,” Hardy said. “We need them, and the only way to [protect them] is to help regardless of what’s going on. I help them when the fires are raging, when the 200 kilometers per hour winds are going on, and I do not do that for the money.”

Hardy said that although solidarity can be found even in unfavorable conditions, the most reliable response to a natural disaster is to adopt a mindset of self-sufficiency.

“When there’s a disaster, the assumption is that no one’s coming to help you. It's up to you. It’s not up to the President, it’s not up to FEMA, it’s up to you,” Hardy said.

With that in mind, Hardy said that he hopes for Bee Platoon to strengthen community awareness on the importance of honeybees in natural disasters, believing that beekeeping can become a space where individuals can appreciate the natural environment.

“Bee Platoon is going to be the dominant global response team for honeybees, not just for this insular community, but for everyone,” Hardy said. “That’s my vision and my dream.”

Hardy can be reached by email or through Bee Platoon’s .