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SALT LAKE CITY — Did you know all worker bees are female, not male?
It's a fun fact Tatiana Subbotin loves to share to dispel one of many common misconceptions of honeybees.
"That's our main goal," she said at the Honeybee Festival in Salt Lake City on Saturday. "To educate people."
Subbotin, a board member of Slow Foods, helped organize the festival at the Sorenson Unity Center — the seventh year local beekeepers and enthusiasts have gathered to spread their knowledge and passion for honeybees.
Festival-goers tasted honey samples, smelled beeswax candles and shopped for other locally-crafted bee products while some, like Carmie Bednar, sought information on how to care for her own beehive.
Bednar, to her excitement, got a hive for Mother's Day from her daughter, Samantha, and she went to the Honeybee Festival to learn how to start her own colony.
Samantha Bednar joked that she got her mom the hive because "she's addicted to honey." But she added on a more serious note that honey dramatically helps her mother's asthma.
"She hasn't had any asthma attacks since regularly having honey with her tea in the morning," Samantha Bednar said. "It's been amazing. We had been getting bigger and bigger honey jars, and now we're at a 5-gallon bucket, so we decided maybe we should invest and start making our own."
As part of her Mother's Day gift, the Bednars drove from Park City to attend the festival to learn how to become beekeepers.
"I'm very excited to get started," Carmie Bednar said, even though she was slightly disappointed to learn that her hive wouldn't begin to produce honey until next year. "It's a learning experience."
Subbotin said the festival has grown since its beginning seven years ago, from about 100 to 400 last year. She attributed its growth to a flourishing beekeeping community along the Wasatch Front.
"It really has become sort of a trend," she said. "I think lately a lot of people have been really interested in it. More people are learning how important and incredible bees are."
As part of a nationwide plan to promote the health of honeybees and other pollinators — amid a widespread decline in the honeybee population — the Utah Department of Agriculture last month urged Utahns to help pollinators thrive.
Last year, Utah experienced a 38 percent decline in its honeybee population. Experts can't point to a specific cause, but suspected culprits include pesticides, stress, mites or inadequate forage.
Denise Hunsaker of the Wasatch Bee Keepers Association hopes backyard beekeepers can help Utah's bee population stay healthy.
"Bees are vital to our natural habitats and for pollination, for flowers, for vegetables, trees," she said.
Subbotin said more than 1/3 of food is "pollinator dependent."
Hunsaker said she has seven hives in her backyard, with about 70,000 bees per hive. She called the art of beekeeping "addicting."
"You want them to thrive," she said, adding that part of beekeeping is ensuring they have a vibrant garden to pollinate. "I plant and plant and plant for my bees."
