“You have so much going on. Why did you decide to write a children’s book?” An interviewer asked me this the other day.

It’s something I haven’t thought much about until recently when I’ve started doing interviews for my new picture book, Little Bee and the Bloom, which is on sale now (!)

Up until now, my answer would have been something like because I wanted to. But that’s not a very good interview answer. I can’t remember what I replied to that particular person with, but it got me thinking that there isn’t just one answer to that question, because there are lots of different sides of me. And anyone who’s ever created something knows that to do it right, you have to harness all those sides at once.

The story of Little Bee and Flower was a way for the scientific, activist, parental, creative, and entrepreneurial sides of me all to come together into one expression.

So here are the answers to that question from each of those sides.

Order Little Bee and the Bloom

My Beekeeper/Bee Lover Side:

I fell in love with bees a long time ago. Ever since, I’ve been trying to get the world to pay attention to their plight. I’ve spent over a decade thinking about how to get adults to care about bees, but not much time thinking about how to get kids to care about bees. Ever since becoming a mom and reading books with my daughter, I see the power they have to shape her understanding of the world. I thought, maybe this book can help play a small part in teaching kids about the importance of bees, or in starting a conversation between a parent and their little one about the important role bees play in nature. Or maybe just get them to point out a bee in their own backyard. Maybe one of those kids will grow up to be a future beekeeper or bee scientist.

The other day, I caught my daughter singing to a bee. Maybe that’s not all due to the book we read almost nightly, but I think it’s fair to give it some of the credit.

My Environmentalist Side:

I wanted the bees to be an entry point for kids and parents into a larger conversation about nature. Understanding how these small creatures play such an important role in our lives through the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the flowers and plants we love, is such a perfect way to see how everything in nature is interdependent. Stories and characters can be a great way to get kids curious about nature from a young age.

My Mom Side:

I wrote this book for my daughter. I wanted to do something that she would be proud of at two-and-a-half. She loves picture books, and to get to show her one and tell her that I made that was a very cool moment. As any parent knows, at the end of the day, you just want to inspire and impress your kid.

I also wrote it because I wanted to teach her something. I teach her things every day–I teach her with words (that only sometimes works) and I teach her with actions (who knows which ones will end up imprinting on her). But I see the power that books can have to teach her something. I wanted to write a book that taught her the importance of stopping when you see someone in distress. The book begins with Little Bee seeing a sad and lonely flower and asks what’s wrong. The whole book hinges on Little Bee’s empathy and curiosity. Without those there would be no book.

I also wanted to teach her that little creatures can make a big difference.

My Entrepreneur Side:

I love developing new products and releasing them into the world. There’s nothing like the feeling of identifying a problem, building something to address it, and then hearing stories of the people it helped. I think that same drive is what’s behind this book. I’m excited to see all the pictures of parents reading it with their kids.

My Creative Side:

Before becoming a mom and having no time for hobbies, I was pretty creative. I kept journals, I crafted, I danced. I found myself missing that. Writing the pages of this book–collaborating with Katie Hunt, the book’s amazingly talented illustrator–I felt something I hadn’t felt in a while. In the best moments, it was a kind of calm focus. I realized I’d been missing that feeling.

All the sides of me are excited for you to meet Little Bee and Flower. I hope you and your little one will come to love them as much as I do. If you do, I’d love to see your pictures, videos, songs–anything you want to share that the book might inspire. 🐝

You can order Little Bee and the Bloom on Barnes and Noble.com, Amazon, and on the Beekeeper’s Naturals website.

My two-year-old is starting preschool in a few weeks. This will be the first time she’ll be surrounded by other kids for hours a day, five days a week. I’m nervous for her to start. What if she doesn’t like it? What if she doesn’t make friends? What if she acts out?

I’m also nervous about a range of health issues. How could I not be? I’ve spent the last 10+ years studying immunity, environmental toxins, and pesticides. I want more than anything to shield my daughter from all of it. But I know I can’t. I’ve talked about this a bit before–about how I need to let go and let be. So, here’s exactly how I’m thinking about what to prioritize and what to let go of as she leaves the house for the first time.

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Reframing Food

At home, we eat very healthy. We limit added sugars and processed foods as much as possible. We focus on a balanced, diverse diet filled with fruits and veggies and proteins. A healthy diet is a pillar of healthy metabolism, immunity, and longevity.

They’re going to give my daughter lunch at preschool. I’ve had to think about how to handle this. Camp this summer has been a good learning. I’ve packed her a healthy lunch every day, but she always comes back with it uneaten. She just eats the pizza or tacos whatever they serve because all the other kids are eating it.

At preschool, the teacher cooks the class lunch every day. Besides that being adorable, it means she won’t be eating overly processed food. It still won’t be as healthy as what we eat at home, but I’d say that’s still pretty good. Yes, eating healthy is important. It’s a value we’ll still hold onto at home, but I also think it’s important for her to feel comfortable socially and feel like she has some autonomy.

Testing Our Immune Routine

Preschool is a cesspool of germs. Up until now, my daughter has had a great track record of staying healthy. I largely credit our immune hygiene routine. But spending hours with over a dozen germy toddlers is going to be the ultimate test for it.

For now, I’m not planning to change it. But I may decide to up her vitamin C intake (right now it’s once a week). She’s still taking propolis daily, which is the foundation for everything else.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Prepping Her Environment

Recent research suggests that HEPA filters can reduce infection transmission risk in preschool classrooms by up to 88%. So, I bought two Air Doctor filters for my daughter’s new preschool classroom. I know that’s kind of crazy. But I really don’t want a sick kid. And I don’t want a sick preschooler getting me sick. And I can afford it. I also bought her teacher a bunch of natural disinfecting wipes to stock in her classroom.

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Is any of this necessary? No. Am I crazy? Maybe. Was her teacher genuinely thankful? Yes.

I also offered to get her classroom tested for mold, but her teacher declined. Fair enough. Maybe part of sending our kids off for the first time is also a practice in letting go. I’ll never be able to control every environment she’s in and that’s okay. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself.

Prioritizing Nature

A study in Finland found that playing on a forest floor daily boosted kids’ immune systems and gut-microbiomes.

At home, my daughter spends a lot of time in our backyard. She goes to backyard music classes and swim classes, and we go on hikes multiple times a week. I’m thinking about how to weave nature into her routine once pre-school starts.

I think the answer is to be more intentional and structured about outdoor time. She’s been helping maintain our backyard pollinator garden. Really getting in the dirt of a natural, diverse ecosystem, seems to be what helps most with immunity–so I’m hopeful that will help.

Letting Go

I’m not worried about my daughter. I know she’s going to thrive in preschool. But up until now, I’ve been able to control her environment most of the time. And I know I’ve been a bit more hypersensitive to this than most. Working in the wellness industry, constantly seeing pesticide regulation stripped back and PFAS seeping its way into more and more products, it’s hard to not want to shield my daughter from as much as I can. But, starting in a few weeks, for much of the week, she’s going to be in an environment I can’t control. I can’t control the food she eats or the care she gets or the kids she interacts with. On an intellectual level, I know this is good. On an emotional level, I’m learning to find peace in letting go. Maybe preparing her for preschool is more about me adapting than it is her. And I know she’s going to have the time of her life.

Then in May, the EPA proposed rescinding most of the brand-new PFAS limits those results are measured against. The public comment window on that proposal closes this Monday, July 20, which is why I’m publishing this now instead of sitting on it.

The PFAS drinking water data sit in a raw government file so large that Excel can’t open it. The data is technically public, but no normal person could ever use it.

So I asked my team at Beekeeper’s Naturals to do what we did with the fumigant data earlier this year and turn it into a tool anyone can use. Check it out here:

Search your water system here.

Type in your ZIP code and you’ll see which PFAS were detected in your water system, at what levels, and how they compare to the EPA’s limits. I looked mine up first, obviously. LA city water came back clean, with no detections of any of the 29 chemicals tested. Then I checked a neighbour hood some of my friends live in ten minutes from my house, and it came back with PFOS at nearly four times the federal limit. I didn’t expect two systems ten minutes apart to look that different.

A 30-Second PFAS Refresher

PFAS are the synthetic chemicals behind nonstick pans, waterproof jackets, and grease-proof food wrappers. They’re called “forever chemicals” because they essentially never break down. They build up in water, soil, and blood, and the CDC finds them in 97% of Americans it tests. Exposure is linked to kidney and testicular cancer, weakened immune response, and pregnancy complications, at doses so small that the limits are measured in parts per trillion. One part per trillion is about one drop of water in 20 Olympic swimming pools, and the federal limits sit at 4 to 10 drops.

Why Didn’t This Map Exist Already?

Because for most of the country, nobody had checked the water. EWG’s Tap Water Database is the tool I recommend for other contaminants like arsenic, nitrate, and disinfection byproducts, but its PFAS data was stitched together from state records that predate any national testing, and a few states did most of that testing while many did almost none. The new EPA data covers nearly every sizable water system in the country, tested the same way. Roughly one in three systems detected at least one PFAS, and one in six tested at or above a federal limit.

How To Read Your Results

Being over a limit today is not illegal. Utilities have until 2029 to comply (the EPA has proposed pushing that to 2031), so a red result means the water tested above what the EPA considers safe to drink over a lifetime, not that your utility is breaking the law. Many systems are already installing treatment. A green result means nothing was found above the reporting thresholds, which isn’t quite a guarantee of zero. And if your ZIP doesn’t come up at all, you’re probably on a small system that wasn’t required to test, or a private well. Wells never get tested by the government, so if you’re on one, a test through a state-certified lab is worth every penny.

What To Do If Your System Has PFAS

If your system showed detections, filtering your drinking water is probably a good idea. You want to make sure you have a filter that can handle PFAS.

• Look for filters with a NSF/ANSI 53 or NSF/ANSI 58 (reverse osmosis) certification with a PFAS claim rather than trusting the marketing copy. Most fridge filters and basic pitchers don’t qualify.

• The Aquasana is a well rated under-the sink-sink option.

• You only need to filter the water you swallow. PFAS don’t evaporate in the shower or absorb through skin, so you don’t need a whole-house filter system for this.

• Replace cartridges on schedule. A saturated filter quietly stops working, and there’s no taste or smell to warn you.

• Boiling doesn’t help. It removes the water and leaves the PFAS behind, so it actually concentrates them.

The Limits Are on the Chopping Block

In April 2024, after decades of pressure, the EPA set the first enforceable federal limits for PFAS in drinking water. The May proposal would rescind four of the six, keeping only PFOA and PFOS and scrapping the limits for PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and mixtures of them.

Submit a comment before the July 20 deadline. It takes five minutes, and the EPA is required to read and respond to substantive comments before it finalizes anything. If your system showed one of the chemicals on the chopping block, say so.

States can also set their own limits, and several, including New Jersey, Michigan, and New York, already have. If the federal limits shrink, the states become the backstop. Send your state legislators your water system’s numbers from the map and ask what the plan is. Legislators pay more attention to constituent mail than people think, especially when it includes local numbers.

A Note About the Map

These results were released in January and cover about 95% of public water systems. We’ll update the map with new updates in the fall when they are posted. Samples were taken where treated water enters the distribution system, so levels at your tap can differ, and some systems have added treatment since testing. This is an educational tool, not a compliance determination, and minor data-processing errors are possible.

Sources for this article:

1. Interactive PFAS tap water map (built from EPA UCMR 5 data)

2. EPA: UCMR 5 occurrence data

3. EPA: Proposed PFAS rescission rule

4. Submit a public comment (docket EPA-HQ-OW-2025-0654)

5. ATSDR: PFAS health effects

6. CDC: National biomonitoring PFAS fact sheet

7. EPA: Identifying drinking water filters certified to reduce PFAS

8. EWG Tap Water Database

9. Interactive fumigant map (built from USGS data)

Every morning my daughter walks outside to check on our garden. She crouches down and counts how many bees she can find. The other day we counted four (our record so far.) She helped plant it, so she treats it like it’s hers, and it’s amazing to see how that sense of ownership increases her appreciation of nature. It’s worth dozens of hikes and camping trips.

I moved to a new house a few months ago and I’ve had a running list of projects I’ve been wanting to do. Near the top was building a pollinator garden. I’ve been a beekeeper for over a decade and I’ve written before about what you can do to help save bees including planting a pollinator garden. I even wrote a children’s book about pollination because I think it’s so important for my daughter to learn an appreciation for nature. But until now, I hadn’t had enough of a yard to actually build a dedicated pollinator garden of my own.

Pollinators support roughly 35% of global food production and they’re in steep decline. A single garden with the right plants can become a real habitat for them, especially native bees that forage close to home.

I found an awesome professional gardener named Malcolm who really understands the local flora in Southern California, and together we turned a few patches of grass in my yard into something that’s already attracting life.

It was honestly easier than I expected, and I think anyone can do some version of what we did regardless of their gardening experience or their budget. Malcolm helped me memorialize everything we did so you can replicate it.

As I write this, I’m looking out onto the yard we built. There’s something really beautiful about taking the time to make the small plot of earth that you own a safe haven for other creatures—a small part of your local ecosystem.

Building a pollinator garden really comes down to four things: assess your space, prep your soil, pick the right plants, and put them in the ground.

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Assess Your Space

Before you buy a single plant, spend time in your yard at different times of day. Watch where the sun hits, where water pools, where you actually spend time. You’re looking for zones that get good light and that you’ll see regularly, because a pollinator garden you can watch from your kitchen window is one you’ll actually maintain.

When Malcolm came to my house, the first thing he did was walk the entire yard. He ran his hands through the soil in every zone we’d be planting in. He noted the light, the existing plants, and the overall layout. From that visit, we put together a plan:

• One 4 x 6 raised bed for vegetables and herbs

• Three separate native and pollinator zones

• Fruit tree care for an existing orange tree

• A soil activation plan

We placed the native zones adjacent to the veggie bed and fruit trees so pollinators working the natives would also service the food crops. The two sides of the garden need each other.

Prep Your Soil

If you’re in Southern California (or anywhere with heavy clay), your soil is probably compacted and relatively lifeless. You need to wake it up before you plant anything. The goal is to introduce microbial life that makes nutrients actually available to plant roots and breaks up the clay so it can absorb water.

Work compost and biochar into your soil and water it in. You can buy both at most nurseries. Biochar acts as long-term housing for beneficial microbes. If you can get premade vermicompost tea (available online), even better. We also used Dr. Bronner’s peppermint hemp soap as a surfactant to help everything penetrate the clay. Malcolm said the peppermint and hemp would also double as pest deterrents. Then give the soil at least a few days to activate before you plant. A week is better. Three weeks is ideal.

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Pick Your Plants

As a beekeeper, this is the part I had the strongest opinions about. You want to balance two things: 1. native plants that local pollinators already have relationships with, and 2. enough variety that something is blooming in every season so pollinators always have a reason to be in your garden.

A lot of people don’t realize that about 70% of native bee species actually nest underground in bare soil, not in hives. And they forage close to home, which means a small patch of the right plants in your yard can become an underground nesting bee’s entire habitat. You’re also supporting butterflies, hummingbirds, and dozens of other species that move pollen. When my daughter and I count bees in our garden, we’re usually seeing native species I couldn’t have identified a year ago. They showed up because we gave them a reason to.

If you’re not in Southern California, your plant list will look completely different from ours, but the principle is the same. In my guide to saving pollinators I linked to the Pollinator Partnership’s planting guides, which let you plug in your zip code and get a region-specific list. It’s the best free resource I’ve found for this.

Here’s what we chose in our garden:

In the raised bed:

• Cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, green onion, garlic, and herbs including basil, chive, oregano, thyme, and parsley. The pepper selection was intentionally broad — shishito and jimmy nardello on the mild end, up through jalapeño, serrano, habanero, and thai chili.

• Blueberries went in a half-wine barrel near the kitchen window pollinator zone.

• Spearmint got its own container because it will take over everything if you let it (it also deters coyotes, which is a real consideration in LA).

• Borage is a total pollinator magnet and I knew I wanted it as a bridge between the food crops and the pollinator zones.

In the three native and pollinator zones: We drew from a palette of California natives and Mediterranean plants that are both drought-tolerant and functional for pollinators. We selected plants that hand off blooms season to season. Remember, besides native plants, the goal is that at any point in the year, something is flowering.

• Multiple sages (Cleveland, Hummingbird, and Bee’s Bliss) because they’re workhorses for pollinators and extremely low-maintenance once established.

• California fuchsia, buckwheat, and milkweed. I insisted on milkweed because it’s the only plant monarch caterpillars can eat. No milkweed, no monarchs.

• California lilac, monkeyflower, and manzanita add structure and depth.

• Lavender in a few varieties, California poppy, goldenrod, and Mexican marigold round out the color and seasonal coverage.

Put It in the Ground

If you have the budget, a raised bed with drip irrigation on a timer makes the veggie side of this almost self-sustaining. We built our bed on-site from California redwood with a food-grade sealant, set on pavers to prevent sinking. But pots, half-wine barrels, or even a simple mound of amended soil will work.

For the native zones, you’re just planting directly into the ground you’ve already prepped.

The whole thing took about two weeks, but the active work was concentrated into four days with a half-day for site prep and soil activation, one day for bed construction, one day for planting everything, and a focused session for fruit tree care. Planting day was all hands on deck. My daughter and I were out there all day. Well, I was out there all day and my daughter was out there in like ten minute spurts.

What It Costs

The full project came in around $4,000. That included Malcolm’s fee, the custom redwood raised bed with irrigation, three native and pollinator zones, a curated mix of vegetable and herb starts, light fruit tree pruning, and the soil activation throughout.

If you want to scale down, you can swap the custom bed for a few nice pots or half-wine barrels, water by hand instead of installing irrigation, and start with one pollinator zone instead of three. The one thing Malcolm told me not to cut is soil prep. It’s a relatively small line item that pays off across every other investment you make.

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Keeping It Alive

One of the best parts of planting natives is that they evolved for the climate you plant them in. Once established, they really don’t ask for much.

Malcolm tells me that the first year is the most work. Your plants need consistent watering while their roots establish, even the drought-tolerant ones. After that first year, all that established native plantings need is a deep watering roughly once every three to four weeks during dry months. The raised veggie bed needs more attention (you’ll replant seasonally and keep an eye on pests) but the irrigation timer handles watering.

Leave spent flower stems standing through winter rather than cutting them in fall—overwintering insects use them as shelter, which is the whole point of a pollinator garden. Native plants don’t need fertilizer. They evolved in lean soil. Mulch annually to retain moisture and keep weeds down, but make sure not to mulch every square inch. About 70% of native bee species nest underground, so leaving a few patches of bare, undisturbed soil in or near your pollinator zones gives them a place to actually live, not just eat.

Keep It Chemical-Free

A pollinator garden treated with synthetic pesticides is worse than no garden at all. You’re attracting bees and butterflies to a place that poisons them.

Roundup is still the most common herbicide in American yards, and neonicotinoids (the class of insecticides most toxic to bees) are in more products than people realize. Many plants sold at big-box nurseries are pre-treated with neonicotinoids before they even reach the shelf. When you’re buying plants, ask whether they’ve been treated, and buy from local nurseries that can tell you their sourcing.

For weeds, the best defense is a thick layer of mulch and hand pulling. If you want something stronger, horticultural vinegar (20% acetic acid, much stronger than what’s in your kitchen) works as a contact herbicide on young weeds. You can find it at most garden centers. We used a homemade vinegar-chili spray in certain areas of our yard for pest and animal deterrence, and Dr. Bronner’s soap as a surfactant, both of which did the job without putting anything toxic into the soil.

For pests, neem oil and insecticidal soap handle most of what you’ll encounter in a home garden. Companion planting helps too. The reason we planted so many sages and spearmint is that their scent naturally repels certain insects. A healthy, biologically active soil (which is why we prepped ours) also produces plants that are more resistant to disease and pests on their own.

This is one area where I don’t think there’s a middle ground. If you’re building a garden for pollinators, commit to keeping it clean.

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What You’ll Need

This is the full list of materials for a project like ours. Scale up or down depending on your space and budget.

Soil prep

• Compost (available at any nursery)

• Biochar

• Vermicompost tea (premade is fine — available online)

• Dr. Bronner’s peppermint hemp soap (surfactant for clay soil; also deters pests)

Raised bed (or alternatives)

• Lumber (California redwood or quality cedar) or large pots or half-wine barrels

• Pavers for the base (prevents sinking)

• Food-grade sealant

• Drip irrigation system with timer (optional but worth it)

Plants

• Native and pollinator plants. See the full palette in “Pick Your Plants” above, or use Pollinator Partnership’s guides for your region

• Vegetables, herbs, and fruit. See “Pick Your Plants” above. Most warm-season crops (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs) grow in every region, so this list doesn’t change the way your native plants will.

Chemical-free pest and weed control

• Horticultural vinegar (20% acetic acid — not household vinegar)

• Neem oil

• Insecticidal soap

• Dr. Bronner’s peppermint hemp soap (surfactant and pest deterrent)

• Vinegar-chili spray (animal and pest deterrence)

• Mulch (annual application for moisture retention and weed suppression)

P.S. If you want to get in touch with Malcolm, you can reach him at malcolm.qsvm@gmail.com. He’s currently taking bookings for the fall-winter season in Southern California!

I travel a lot for work. I visit our apiary suppliers in Europe to check on quality and sustainability, our retail partners across North America, and I do media and speaking events in New York and Austin. Some months I’m barely home. When my daughter was born, I decided I would bring her along with me for almost all of it.

I knew traveling with a baby, and now a toddler, wouldn’t be easy. After a lot of research and trial and error, I’ve gotten her travel to a place that is, if not exactly easy, far from the nightmare it could be. We’ve been to ten countries together. The last trip was the kind that sounds insane on paper: a twenty-hour trip from Los Angeles to Italy, a three-hour layover stuck in the middle, and then, because apparently that wasn’t enough, a three-and-a-half-hour drive once we landed. With a two-year-old. (Two years and five months, but who’s counting.) She was great for almost all of it, which has nothing to do with her being an unusually easy kid and everything to do with a handful of things I’ve figured out after getting plenty of them wrong.

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Set the expectations

My daughter and I have a quick conversation ahead of every trip. I’ll tell her, ‘this one is going to be a little longer than our trip to Spain,’ or this one will be ‘a lot shorter than New York.’ She has reference points now. Getting on the plane already knowing roughly what she’s in for heads off most of the meltdowns before they start. I also hype her, I get her excited about the new adventure her and mommy are taking. Sometimes that means buying a book about the place we’re going to, other times it’s telling her about my favourite foods or places in the area. Even if it’s your kid’s first trip there are ways to set expectations. For example, we read Richard Scarry’s A Day at the Airport before trips too, and that little board book has done more to make the airport feel normal to her than anything I could explain.

The gear I won’t fly without

All products are hyperlinked below — or browse my full ‘Toddler Travel Guide’ ShopMy storefront here.

My reasoning on the big stuff is maximum convenience. I travel solo with a toddler often, I can only carry so much, and I need gear that folds small and is still safe. Here’s what’s in the bag, in order of how much I’d panic if I forgot it.

1. WayB Pico car seat – This is the one that changed travel for me. It’s FAA-approved for use on the plane, folds nearly flat, and weighs about as much as a full grocery bag. She gets a safe, familiar seat both in the air and in whatever car meets us, and I’m not wrecking my back hauling it through three terminals. I keep it in its carry bag so I can wear it like a backpack through the airport.

2. UppaBaby Minu stroller – It folds down small enough to carry on one shoulder and opens again with one hand. When I’m holding her, a passport, and a bag, one-handed matters more than I can explain to someone who hasn’t done it.

3. A toddler harness – I know people look at me weird, but I don’t really care. Given how much I have to deal with at the airport, knowing she’s not going to run away when my back is turned is worth it.

4. Miss Mouth’s stain remover – Travel outfits take a beating, and this stuff has bailed me out more times than I can count. A blueberry situation at hour two doesn’t have to mean a ruined shirt for the rest of the trip.

5. Sanitizing wipes and a hand spray – Planes are gross, I don’t think that’s a hot take. These are for the tray table, the armrests, and the hundred things she touches and then puts straight in her mouth.

6. Compression packing cubes – These are for me, not her, but when you’re the only adult and also the pack mule, every inch you save is worth it.

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How I handle screens

I find the conversation around screens online to be kind of exhausting and a little smug. Yes we don’t do screens at home, and I did no screens before she turned two. But we have the luxury of that because we both work full time so have a nanny and don’t have to constantly be in parent mode. Lots of the parents in my life say they need a little screen time to get a break once in a while. I get that. And there’s nowhere that I get that more than when I’m traveling with my daughter.

Because travel is so intense, we are pretty lax about screens on airplanes because it’s an isolated, special time and she’s no screens otherwise. But still I try multiple things before going straight to the screen, because even the screen can get old after a while and even low-stim programming can negatively impact her mood if she’s watching for too long.

• The Yoto Mini – I reach for this before any screen, and it’s been huge for us. It’s audio only. Stories, songs, sounds, no screen at all, so it works like listening to the radio. She has to build the pictures in her own head, which keeps her imagination doing the work instead of having everything fed to her. It’s the first thing out of the bag and it buys me a long stretch of calm.

• Quiet things for her hands – I bring plastic-free, low-piece options that won’t scatter under the seat in front of us. A reusable puffy sticker set and a small set of magnetic blocks both hold her attention far longer than they have any right to. She also has a Habbi Habbi set, a wand that reads bilingual books aloud when she taps the pages, which is screen-free but still feels like a treat.

• Screens, but chosen carefully – When the screen does come out, I’m picky about what’s on it, because not all screen time is the same. Fast, loud, high-stimulation shows leave her wired and antsy an hour later. Slow, gentle ones don’t. For this last trip I downloaded Vooks, which is animated storybooks with gentle motion, a good in-between for when she’s too wound up for the Yoto but I don’t want the firehose of regular kids’ content. I keep a Fire tablet loaded with shows for the long legs. And I sorted what she’s allowed to watch by how stimulating it is:

• Very low stim: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Little Bear, Puffin Rock, Trash Truck, Tumble Leaf (plus plain nature videos, we mostly watched dolphins and whales)

• Low to moderate: Daniel Tiger, Frog and Toad, Stillwater

• Moderate: Bluey, modern Sesame Street

Things like Paw Patrol, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Blippi, and Cocomelon are all too stimulating.

Snacks, water, and keeping her well

I keep the rest of our routine simple, and I don’t try to recreate my entire health setup at 35,000 feet. For her, on the road, it comes down to a few things.

1. All of our own snacks – Airport and airplane food is processed and sugary and that impacts her behavior as much as it does her health. So I pack everything myself and keep it organic and as clean as I can. On our last trip we brought:

   1. Chomps grass-fed beef sticks

   2. Hard-boiled eggs

   3. Dry-roasted edamame

   4. Grass-fed cheese sticks

   5. Papa Steve’s protein bars (the ones sweetened with honey instead of refined sugar)

   6. Kale chips

   7. Ella’s Flats seed crackers

   8. Organic popcorn

   9. Freeze-dried unsweetened berries

   10. Masa Chips

   11. Gimme Seaweed Snacks

   12. Bison Jerkey

2. Electrolytes on the long legs – I bring her own water bottle. (I do a crazy thing with bringing medical grade water through security so I can fill our bottles not with bottled or watered fountain water—but that’s way overkill for like 99% of people). On long flights I add an electrolyte packet. Cabin air is bone dry and little kids dehydrate faster than we do, and a cranky, dehydrated toddler at hour eight is not a problem you want to be solving at 35,000 feet.

3. Her immune routine, kid-sized – The thing I’m most protective about on the road is her not getting sick, because a plane is a sealed tube of recycled air and an airport isn’t much better. Her lineup is the kid version of mine:

   1. Beekeeper’s Kids Propolis Throat Spray. Propolis is the whole reason I started Beekeeper’s Naturals, and it’s the one thing I won’t get on a plane without, for me or for her.

   2. Beekeeper’s Kids Saline Nasal Mist, because a dried-out little nose in that cabin air is its own kind of misery.

   3. Beekeeper’s propolis lollipops once we’re on board. They pull double duty, since keeping her sucking and swallowing through takeoff and landing is the fix for the ear pressure that makes little kids miserable.

   4. Nordic Naturals kids’ DHA for the omega-3s. I won’t rehash the rest of the supplement science here, since I broke it down in full in my air travel immunity protocol.

4. Bare feet on the grass when we land – Even if you don’t buy the science behind ‘grounding’ after a flight, this one has plenty of other benefits. After a long flight I get her shoes off and let her stand barefoot on the grass for a few minutes wherever we’ve ended up. Fresh air and bare feet after ten hours in a metal tube resets both of us.

5. A few things for the radiation – At cruising altitude you’re above a lot of the atmosphere that normally shields you from cosmic radiation. A single flight is a tiny dose, less than a chest X-ray, but it’s cumulative, and for someone who flies as much as we do it’s worth thinking about. Supplements can give your body more of what it needs to handle the free radical damage it causes. Propolis is one of them, but also I take CoQ10 (200 mg, ubiquinol form, which absorbs better than ubiquinone) and both my daughter and I take a double dose of omega-3s. I developed this routine with Dr. Apostolos Lekkos, who is an incredible functional medicine doctor (with some famous clients too).

   

   I’ll be honest that the science on EMF wearables is limited, but Lily and I both wear an Aires Lifetune Flex necklace on the plane and I feel better having them on. I’m pregnant with my second now so I also wear the Juunaday All Day Bodysuit, which has a silver-lined EMF shielding panel over the belly. There isn’t massive evidence for these, but it does give me some peace of mind.

People still tell me I’m a little crazy for flying this much with a toddler, and on a bad day at the gate I don’t really argue. But I made this choice on purpose and I would make it again. The life where I’m always leaving her behind is the one I actually couldn’t do. Getting smart about the logistics is just what it costs to keep her with me, and most of that cost is a good stroller, a Yoto, and a bag full of snacks.

If you have any other tips for traveling with kids, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

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The full list, with links

All products are hyperlinked below — or browse my full ‘Toddler Travel Guide’ ShopMy storefront here.

Gear

• UppaBaby Minu stroller

• WayB Pico car seat + carry bag

• Blisstime toddler harness

• Miss Mouth’s Messy Eater stain remover

• Biom hand sanitizing wipes + Littley hand cleanser spray

• SOARSAIL compression packing cubes + BAGSMART toiletry bag

• Frida Portable Potty Seat

• Nuby Disposable Travel Potty

Keeping her busy

• Yoto Mini + travel case

• Habbi Habbi Assortment Set

• Richard Scarry’s A Day at the Airport

• Melissa & Doug reusable puffy stickers

• Hunloot mini magnetic blocks

• Vooks

• Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids tablet

Snacks, water & wellness

• Chomps grass-fed beef sticks

• Seapoint Farms dry-roasted edamame (or organic: The Only Bean)

• Vital Farms organic hard-boiled eggs

• Papa Steve’s honey-sweetened protein bars

• Organic Valley Stringles grass-fed cheese sticks

• Natierra organic freeze-dried berries

• Rhythm Superfoods organic kale chips

• Ella’s Flats seed crackers

• LesserEvil organic popcorn

• JUST INGREDIENTS electrolytes

• Hydro Flask Kids water bottle

• Beekeeper’s Naturals Kids Propolis Throat Spray

• Beekeeper’s Naturals Kids Saline Nasal Mist

• Beekeeper’s Naturals Kids Throat Soothing Lollipops

• Nordic Naturals Kids DHA (omega)

Read next: My Bulletproof Air Travel Immunity Protocol

Today the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Bayer can’t be sued for not putting a cancer warning on Roundup. The case was about a gardener in St. Louis named John Durnell who used Roundup for decades and got non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A jury awarded him $1.25 million. The Supreme Court threw that out.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Kavanaugh, says that because the EPA hasn’t required a cancer warning on Roundup’s label, you can’t sue Bayer in state court for not including one. If the EPA says no warning is needed, that’s the end of it.

But there’s a problem with that. The World Health Organization classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. California lists it as a known carcinogen under Proposition 65. A federal appeals court found the EPA’s own safety analysis so flawed that the agency had to withdraw it. The EPA hasn’t even finished its review of glyphosate’s safety, and the Supreme Court just used that incomplete review as grounds to shut down every failure-to-warn lawsuit in the country. The court acknowledged all of this in the opinion. It decided none of it mattered.

What this actually kills

Most of the roughly 200,000 Roundup lawsuits include “failure-to-warn” claims, which argue Bayer should have warned consumers about cancer risk. Those claims are gone after today. Bayer’s stock jumped 20% on the news.

Design defect and negligence claims, which argue that the product itself is dangerous regardless of what the label says, can still move forward. But failure-to-warn has been the backbone of this litigation for a decade, and removing it is a massive win for Bayer. This is exactly what they’ve spent years and billions of dollars in legal fees trying to achieve.

This is bigger than a label

The ruling says that if a federal agency approves a product label, the company can’t be sued in state court for what the label doesn’t say. We’ve watched federal agencies get it wrong on tobacco, on PFAS, and on opioids—to name just a few. An agency signing off on a product has never meant that product is safe, and it shouldn’t give the company that makes it a free pass from accountability.

And Bayer knows this. They’ve already paid out over $11 billion to roughly 100,000 people who say Roundup gave them cancer. They have a proposed $7.25 billion settlement on the table to make another 60,000 cases go away. You don’t pay $18 billion to settle lawsuits over a product you believe is safe.

But Kavanaugh’s own opinion includes language that matters going forward. He wrote that Bayer must use the current label “unless and until EPA approves or requires a change.” That “unless and until” is important. The preemption only holds because the EPA currently says no cancer warning is needed. If the EPA finishes its review and changes its position, the legal basis for this ruling falls apart and the door for failure-to-warn lawsuits reopens. Which means the EPA’s ongoing glyphosate review, the one it still hasn’t finished, may now be the single most consequential regulatory proceeding in the country for anyone who cares about pesticide accountability.

But I’ve always believed the answer was never going to come from a label on a package. What we actually need is a sustained commitment to restructuring our food system, from crop insurance to commodity markets to rebuilding the soil science infrastructure that’s been gutted. We need to be in genuine tension with the companies profiting from the status quo, not handing them liability shields. Lawsuits were one of the only levers we had to create that tension. The Supreme Court just weakened that lever, which means the others have to get stronger.

And this may be a blessing in disguise because, instead of holding out hope that the courts are going to save us, we can go back to the work of holding our politicians countable to take real action to remake our food system, because that’s really the thing we’re after, ultimately.

What to do

• Push on the Farm Bill. It’s still being negotiated in the Senate, and industry is actively trying to insert more preemption language that would further shield pesticide companies. Call your senator. This fight is live right now.

• Demand the EPA finish its glyphosate review. The agency has been dragging its feet for years. This ruling makes that review more important than ever, because its outcome could undo the legal shield the Supreme Court just handed Bayer.

• Support state-level action. California’s Prop 65 listing, SprayDays notification system, and buffer zone requirements all happened because people pushed at the state level. The Supreme Court took away one tool, but states can still regulate pesticide use, fund public health research, and require transparency.

• Don’t let this discourage you. Bayer is spending billions on this fight because they are scared of us, scared of juries, scared of public pressure, scared of a food system that doesn’t need their products. We built that pressure. The worst thing we can do now is stop.

I’ll keep covering this.

That Steven Bartlett clip everyone is talking about got me thinking about sleep hygiene. All the takes I’m seeing are on the extremes. Either that optimization has gone too far, or that alcohol is terrible and we shouldn’t do things that harm our sleep. I’m finding (as I increasingly do these days) that I fall somewhere in the middle.

I have an Oura ring. I don’t obsess over it, and I don’t use the data as a replacement for my own body signals. I decide how I’m feeling first. Do I feel like I slept well? Then I’ll look at the data to get a more complete picture of how I slept. Thinking about my own sleep hygiene protocol, it’s not one-size fits all. My standard, everyday protocol is pretty basic with a few things worth pointing out. But then there are the days where I know I need to go further than the standard. Either I haven’t been sleeping well and my cortisol is spiked and keeping me from falling asleep, or I’ve had too much caffeine (or other stimulants–more on that later) or, yes, I’ve had a few glasses of wine.

Try out each protocol for each case. This kind of framework has been really useful for me. I don’t feel like I have to optimize like crazy every single day, but sleep is important, and there are times when I do want to have a serious plan to fall back on to get a good night of rest.

My Standard Protocol

On a normal night I keep things simple. The whole point of a standard routine is consistency, so I run the same few things every night and don’t make a production of it.

Soft light/Amber Light: Once the sun goes down, the overhead lights go off and I switch to soft, warm lamps, ideally red or amber. Amber light barely registers to your circadian system, so your body keeps making melatonin right on schedule. I also have dimmers on the lights so I can control the level of light and even begin to turn it down the closer I get to sleep time.

Keep the room cool, and crack a window: Everyone knows about the importance of a cool room. My husband likes 66 degrees and I like 68, so we compromise at 67. I also crack a window–just enough to circulate new air in while keeping the cold air from going out. A few studies found that better ventilation measurably improved sleep quality and next-day performance.

Beekeeper’s Naturals Stress Support: This is the only sleep support supplement I take nightly. It has KSM-66 ashwagandha, which has a cortisol-lowering effect that builds up over a few weeks of consistent use, not from a single dose, so taking it nightly is what keeps my baseline stress response steady over time. The L-theanine adds a gentler, same-night calm on top. For those who don’t know, L-theanine is an amino acid found in herbal tea leaves. It’s why drinking a cup of chamomile tea before bed can help relax you.

Keep my phone away from the bed: My phone charges across the room (if in my room at all), not on the nightstand. Mostly this is so I can’t grab it the second my eyes open in the morning.

Mouth tape: I find sleeping with mouth tape leaves me less dry in the morning, and I do find with forced nasal breathing I wake up feeling more refreshed, like I’ve gotten a better flow of oxygen during the night. The one hard rule with mouth tape is that you only do this if your nose is clear. If you’re congested or fighting a cold, skip it. If you’re chronically congested, try clearing with a gentle nasal spray before bed. I use Respire strips. They’re PFAS and BPA free and have great testing for heavy metals as well.

My Reset Protocol

I add some things in when I have had a few bad nights of sleep and need a reset. Particularly those nights where I’m tired but wired, completely wrecked but unable to wind down. The reason this happens is when you lose sleep night after night, your stress system ramps up. Your evening cortisol, which is supposed to be low at night, runs higher than it should, and your nervous system tilts toward fight-or-flight. My standard routine assumes my body just needs permission to sleep. When I’m overtired, it needs to be actively talked down.

Evening Meditation/Light yoga: This goes straight at the arousal. Slow breathing with a long, drawn-out exhale flips on the rest-and-digest side of your nervous system, and the exhale is the part doing the work. I keep the yoga gentle and restorative rather than a workout. I also try to treat it as rest instead of as trying to fall asleep, because the harder you chase sleep the more it runs from you. Taking the pressure off is part of how you bring the arousal down.

A Bath: A warm bath an hour or two before bed works through temperature. The heat opens up your blood vessels, and the drop in core temperature afterward is a genuine sleep cue, the same dip the cool room is helping along. People say Epsom salts for relaxation–but realistically you barely absorb magnesium through your skin, so chemically they aren’t doing much. If the ritual relaxes you, though, that still counts on a reset night.

My Caffeine Protocol

I have to admit something here, which is that I don’t do caffeine anymore. If I need a brain/energy boost, I take royal jelly. But royal jelly is still a stimulant and it can affect my sleep if I have too much. So the protocol I’m about to describe works the exact same for caffeine. Whenever I say royal jelly, just substitute caffeine in your mind.

If I’ve had too much royal jelly or if I’ve had it too late and need to offset it, I find that the only thing that works is supplement intervention. A biochemical problem requires a biochemical solution. Here are some things to try:

Glycine (2g): Glycine acts as a calming signal in your nervous system, helping lower your core body temperature and quiet brain activity to promote faster sleep onset and better sleep quality. Research shows that 2-3 g of glycine before bed improves sleep quality and reduces next-day fatigue, even after nights of restricted sleep.

Magnesium Glycinate (120mg-200mg): Magnesium glycinate is the better-absorbed version of magnesium, which can be very beneficial for sleep. Some people have great results with this, some people have no results, some people have stomach issues. The glycinate form should help avoid the stomach issues of typical magnesium, but still something to look out for.

Melatonin (.5-1mg): Melatonin gets a bad rap these days, but it’s really very innocuous. Our bodies naturally produce melatonin, which makes it ideal for supplementation. You definitely don’t want to be relying on it every night, but the occasional supplementation is just fine. Some people wake up groggy with melatonin. If that’s you, try lowering the dose. Many people are taking too high a dose. I take just 1mg, which is a pretty low dose and it doesn’t make me groggy. But you can try starting at .5 mg and working your way up. I take a melatonin when I remember at least 30 minutes to an hour before going to bed after over-doing it on the royal jelly.

I would recommend trying each of these in isolation to see which are most effective for you. With glycine, you can start with 2g and go up to 3g. With melatonin you can start with .5mg and go up to 3mg–but the lower the better with melatonin. With the magnesium you could go higher than 200mg. This is a fairly low dose. I don’t think you’ll need to stack all three–that could lead to morning grogginess.

For each of these, I’d recommend taking them 30-60 minutes before bed if you can remember.

My Drinking Protocol

If you drink, you know. I still drink on occasion, and when I do, I used to constantly wake up at 3am. I found a protocol so that drinking doesn’t disrupt my sleep anymore. It’s a short protocol with just one supplement. Remember, you don’t want to overload your liver with too many supplements to deal with on top of the alcohol.

Raw Honey (1 tablespoon): After a few drinks, your liver drops everything to clear the alcohol — including its overnight job of holding your blood sugar steady. It dips, adrenaline spikes, you’re up at 3am. A tablespoon of raw honey before bed tops off the liver’s reserves, so it has fuel to spare. We sell a great raw superfood honey at Beekeeper’s Naturals, but I wouldn’t recommend it for this purpose. It has royal jelly in it which is a mild stimulant and so could keep you up instead of putting you to sleep.

Magnesium Threonate (145mg): Magnesium threonate is good for boosting deep sleep and preventing middle-of-the-night awakenings. This makes it ideal for nights of drinking where the issue is less falling asleep and more waking up in the middle of the night. Some people report adverse gastrointestinal side effects with magnesium. Less common but possible is increased anxiety or difficulty falling asleep. Of course, you should always be careful when taking any supplements with alcohol. There aren’t any major interactions between magnesium threonate and alcohol that should be an issue, but consider consulting a doctor on this.

A Hydration Packet: Another reason you can wake up in the middle of the night is dehydration. A good sugar-free hydration packet like LMNT gives you the sodium you need to help you hold onto the water you drink, while potassium steadies your heartbeat and nervous system, the things that otherwise leave you jolting awake around 3am.

After I announced my second pregnancy (it’s a boy!) I got a lot of questions about fertility and pregnancy support supplements. What was I taking? What brands did I recommend? Last year, I filmed a podcast with my fertility doctor (and good friend) Dr. Mel Clark called The Science Of: Fertility, where we dug into the functional science behind the whole fertility cycle, from preconception to postpartum. I’ve since been sharing the pod with everyone in my life who’s pregnant or trying to get pregnant, and without fail, they come back to me saying they find the information in the pod invaluable. That’s mostly because of Dr. Mel’s incredible expertise. She has helped countless couples conceive and she, herself, finally was able to conceive after years of doctors telling her she would never be able to.

My husband and I recently conceived for the second time using the conception support protocol I developed with Dr. Mel. And I’m now taking my pregnancy protocol for a second time (so far so good).

Below, I lay out everything I’m taking and why. Fair warning, it’s kind of a lot. I’m not a person who takes a huge stack every day. With supplements, I don’t believe that more is better. But pregnancy is a different story. There’s good evidence for each supplement I list and a good reason for each of them, and with a lot of them, you can’t get the right amounts through food sources alone. At first, the sheer amount of it was overwhelming to me, but I took solace in knowing it would only be for a limited window of time.

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Conception Support Protocol

This is what my husband and I took to help us conceive for our second pregnancy, with the guidance of Dr. Mel. We were able to get pregnant on my first cycle. I, of course, feel incredibly lucky to have been able to conceive easily. I have many friends for which it is a challenge for a number of reasons, from PCOS to endometriosis to age-related difficulty. This protocol could help with some of these conditions. I won’t tell you this approach will guarantee conception. What I will say is that Dr. Clark was able to conceive using a version of this after being told by countless doctors she wouldn’t be able to conceive. There are a number of other things she did, which you can hear about throughout the podcast episodes.

We began this protocol 3 months before we started trying. Dr. Clark and her husband began their protocol 6 months before they started trying. The guidance generally says anywhere from 3-6 months.

What I Took

1. Designs for Health Prenatal Pro

This was my prenatal for both pregnancies. Mel’s guidance on prenatals calls it one of the two bare minimum staples during pregnancy (alongside fish oil). What matters is that it’s methylated, meaning the B vitamins are in their active, bioavailable forms. This is especially important for women with MTHFR mutations who can’t efficiently convert folic acid. I was initially taking extra methylated folate, but Dr. Mel took me off it because the Designs for Health Prenatal Pro already had a sufficient amount. In the OB community, standard of care is still folic acid, but Mel noted that high amounts of folic acid in those who don’t methylate can have negative outcomes. Have the conversation with your provider. It’s important to start a prenatal well before conception so you have a good base from which to start from.

2. Royal Jelly

Royal jelly can act on the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, which is the communication pathway between your brain and your ovaries. It can intensify that signaling so everything communicates better. An animal study showed that royal jelly significantly increased the development of ovarian follicles and raised estrogen and progesterone levels. In subjects with premature ovarian failure, royal jelly actually helped restore ovarian function so they could conceive. It improved hormonal and oxidative markers in a rat model, which could be beneficial for women with PCOS.

I took a spoonful of Beekeeper’s Superfood Honey every day (which contains royal jelly).

3. Tru Niagen

This is to boosts NAD+ levels. NAD+ is critical for mitochondrial function, and it declines in the ovaries as we age, which is one of the reasons egg quality drops over time. Researchers recently identified that an enzyme called CD38 degrades NAD+ in the ovaries, accelerating the loss of egg quality and quantity. In animal studies, NR supplementation increased ovarian reserve, improved oocyte quality, and elevated live birth rates. It also rebalanced mitochondrial dynamics in aging ovaries by correcting folliculogenesis abnormalities.

This hasn’t been tested in humans for fertility yet, but the mechanism suggests it could help.

4. Melatonin

Most people think of melatonin as a sleep supplement, but Dr. Mel explains that it’s actually a powerful antioxidant that can be helpful for both sperm production and ovaries. Women with unexplained infertility were found to have blunted intrafollicular melatonin concentrations with marked oxidative imbalance. Most of the research on fertility benefits is done at 1 to 3 milligrams, which is lower than what a lot of people take for sleep.

Dr. Mel suggests personalizing the dose. Some people feel groggy even at 1mg, and if that’s you, it’s not worth pushing through. I tolerated 1mg well and took it nightly.

Hear our discussion about melatonin for fertility on the pod here.

5. Inositol

Specifically myo-inositol and D-chiro-inositol. Dr. Mel calls this one of the most studied supplements for PCOS. A clinical study found that the 40:1 ratio of myo-inositol to D-chiro-inositol was most effective at restoring ovulation in PCOS women. A meta-analysis of 17 studies showed it significantly increased clinical pregnancy rate and top-grade embryos. One important thing to note is that the ratio of myo to D-chiro matters. Increasing D-chiro alone can actually worsen outcomes. Look for products like Vitamica powder or Pure Encapsulations Inositol Complex that get this right.

Even if you don’t have PCOS, inositol supports ovarian follicle health and insulin sensitivity, which are foundational to fertility.

Hear our discussion about inositol on the pod here.

6. CoQ10, Ubiquinol Form

CoQ10 provides mitochondrial support and antioxidant protection. Eggs are among the most mitochondria-dense cells in the body, and CoQ10 supports the energy production those mitochondria need while also reducing reactive oxygen species.

A randomized controlled trial in women with diminished ovarian reserve found that CoQ10 pretreatment increased retrieved oocytes, produced a higher fertilization rate, and resulted in more high-quality embryos. Significantly fewer women in the CoQ10 group had cancelled transfers due to poor embryo development (8.33% vs 22.89%).

The ubiquinol form (the reduced, active form of CoQ10) is better absorbed than standard CoQ10.

7. Vitamin D

Mel didn’t do a deep dive on vitamin D in the podcast, but it was part of my daily stack and she includes it as a foundational nutrient. The research shows that women undergoing IVF with vitamin D levels below 20 ng/mL had clinical pregnancy rates of just 20% compared to 31% in women with sufficient levels. A meta-analysis found that live birth was more likely in women with adequate vitamin D. A comprehensive review confirmed that vitamin D deficiency is a risk marker for reduced fertility and adverse pregnancy outcomes, and that supplementation decreases both maternal and fetal complications. Most of us are D deficient. Get your levels tested and supplement accordingly.

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What My Husband Took

Men often don’t think fertility supplements apply to them, but their fertility health can affect the chances of conception by up to 40%.

1. Royal Jelly

Same rationale as why I took it, but this is worth emphasizing separately because. The royal jelly in Superfood Honey is one of the few supplements where there’s a human study on male participants showing increased sperm active motility, testosterone, and LH levels after three months. In animal models, it improved sperm count, viability, motility, DNA integrity, and testosterone. Mel called royal jelly “incredible for sperm production and sperm health” and highlighted that the 10-HDA in it helps communication between the brain and the testes, supporting that hormonal pathway.

Mel had Oliver on this every day preconception. She also noted that royal jelly specifically helps with DNA fragmentation in sperm, which is a really important marker that’s unfortunately not part of a standard semen analysis. There’s even an ongoing clinical trial (80 participants) investigating royal jelly for unexplained male infertility and sperm DNA fragmentation.

2. Omega-3/DHA

If you want to keep the male stack simple, Mel’s simplified recommendation would be royal jelly, a men’s multi, and omega-3. The DHA found in fish oil is structurally critical for sperm. It helps with motility and egg penetration. A cross-sectional study of nearly 1,700 men found that men who took fish oil supplements had higher semen volume, higher total sperm count, larger testes, and a more favorable reproductive hormone profile (lower FSH, lower LH, higher free testosterone-to-LH ratio) compared to non-supplementers. A double-blind RCT in 238 infertile men found that 1.84g/day of EPA+DHA for 32 weeks nearly doubled sperm concentration and significantly increased total sperm count.

3. KSM-66 Ashwagandha

The research on ashwagandha (KSM-66 specifically) for male fertility is promising. A pilot study in oligospermic men showed a 167% increase in sperm count, 53% increase in semen volume, and 57% increase in sperm motility after 90 days of ashwagandha supplementation. A systematic review confirmed notable increases in total and free testosterone, and a 2026 double-blind RCT confirmed improvements in sexual health and reproductive hormones.

The mechanism of action here is the cortisol connection. Chronic stress elevates cortisol, which directly suppresses testosterone and impairs sperm production. Ashwagandha acts on the HPA axis to reduce cortisol, which breaks that cycle. For men who are stressed, this is doing double duty for both quality of life and sperm quality.

4. WeNatal for Him

A men’s multivitamin is super important from a micronutrient standpoint, and the key nutrient Dr. Mel highlighted was zinc. Zinc is a must for men because it’s essential for sperm production, testosterone production, and testosterone receptor sensitivity (how well testosterone talks to the cell). A landmark study found that young men on a zinc-restricted diet saw their testosterone drop roughly 73%, while zinc-deficient older men who supplemented nearly doubled theirs.

WeNatal for Him contains 20 key nutrients including CoQ10, NAC, L-carnitine, zinc, selenium, methylated B vitamins, and vitamin D3 in clinically studied doses. The methylated B complex is important because B12 and folate provide the building blocks for proper DNA synthesis during sperm maturation.

5. Needed Sperm Support

This is a targeted sperm health supplement containing probiotics, shilajit, and other fertility-focused nutrients. An evidence-based analysis in Fertility & Sterility found that the ingredients with the strongest evidence for male fertility are L-carnitine, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, CoQ10, and zinc. A systematic review confirmed that targeted antioxidant supplementation can reduce oxidative damage to sperm and improve semen parameters. This is a complement to the multivitamin, not a replacement, and it focuses on the antioxidant and probiotic support that a standard multi doesn’t fully cover.

6. Beekeeper’s Naturals Complete Gut Health

An emerging area of research is how the gut microbiome affects male fertility. A recent research review found that the bacteria in your gut influence testosterone levels, sperm production, and oxidative stress, which is estimated to be a factor in up to 80% of unexplained male infertility cases. In one trial, infertile men with poor motility who took a probiotic saw “drastically improved” sperm motility and reduced DNA fragmentation after just 6 weeks. Another RCT found that probiotic and prebiotic supplementation improved sperm count, concentration, and progressive motility and five participants in the study achieved paternity.

Hear my discussion with Dr. Mel about the role of men in the fertility equation here.

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Pregnancy Protocol

The preconception stack got me ready. But once I was actually pregnant, the priorities shifted. Some supplements carried over, some got dropped, and a few new ones came in that I hadn’t thought about before. Mel’s philosophy during pregnancy is that less can be more, but the things you do take matter a lot. At the bare minimum she recommends a high-quality prenatal and fish oil. Everything else builds on that foundation depending on what you need and what you can tolerate, which is real when first trimester nausea hits and you can barely look at a capsule.

1. Designs for Health Prenatal Pro

I continued my prenatal through both pregnancy and breastfeeding. My last pregnancy, I stopped my prenatal after my daughter was born and Dr. Mel immediately told me to get back on it. If you’re breastfeeding, continuing your prenatal is incredibly important because it continues to provide baby with vital nutrients.

2. Omega-3 Fish Oil

The research on DHA supplementation during pregnancy consistently shows benefits for fetal neurodevelopment, and a Cochrane review found that omega-3 supplementation during pregnancy reduced the risk of preterm birth. I was focused on getting the right amount during breastfeeding too, because baby gets DHA through breast milk. I took fish oil throughout pregnancy and postpartum.

3. Creatine (5g daily)

Mel didn’t discuss creatine on the podcast, but I added it to my stack for this pregnancy based on emerging research. Creatine supports cellular energy production through a different pathway than CoQ10 or NAD+ in that it replenishes ATP directly in high-demand tissues. During pregnancy, creatine demand increases significantly because it’s needed for fetal brain, organ, and tissue development. A review in Nutrients found that maternal creatine supplementation in animal models improved fetal outcomes including brain development and survival under birth stress. Human studies are still limited, but creatine is increasingly recognized as conditionally essential during pregnancy because maternal synthesis can’t keep up with the demands of a growing fetus.

4. Tru Niagen

Same rationale as the preconception section. I continued this into pregnancy for ongoing mitochondrial support, given that pregnancy is one of the most metabolically demanding states the body goes through.

5. Immune Hygiene Routine

During pregnancy, your immune system undergoes significant modulation to tolerate the fetus, which means you’re more susceptible to respiratory infections, colds, and flu. Getting sick during pregnancy isn’t just uncomfortable, it can affect fetal development. I have a full immune system hygiene routine that includes propolis, vitamin C, and zinc, among other things. You can check it out here.

6. Royal Jelly and Choline

The royal jelly research covered in the preconception section applies here too — continued antioxidant support and hormonal communication through the HPG axis. And research confirms that higher choline intake during pregnancy is associated with improved infant cognitive function, and a randomized controlled trial found that 930mg/day of maternal choline improved infant information processing speed. Most prenatals have nowhere near enough. Dr. and I both took the Beekeeper’s Brain Health liposomal because it contains both royal jelly and choline. This is one of those nutrients where you almost certainly need to supplement beyond your prenatal, or eat a lot of eggs, or ideally both.

7. CoQ10, Ubiquinol Form

I continued CoQ10 into pregnancy. This was part of my preconception stack and I saw no reason to stop. The mitochondrial support and antioxidant protection that make it valuable for egg quality preconception continue to matter during pregnancy, when oxidative stress increases and your body’s energy demands are through the roof. CoQ10 levels naturally decline during pregnancy in some women, which makes continued supplementation worth considering.

8. Calcium

Dr. Mel’s calcium discussions on the podcast focused on postpartum, but she noted that “next pregnancy I’ll probably add calcium to my supplement list” even during pregnancy. The reasoning is that baby draws about 300mg of calcium per day from you, and if you’re not getting enough exogenously, it comes from your bones. Mel recommends 1000-1300mg daily during breastfeeding, but starting during pregnancy gives you a head start on protecting your bone density for the demands that come after delivery.

9. Beekeepers Naturals Complete Gut Health

Pregnancy can disrupt digestion because pregnancy hormones (especially high progesterone) can slow gut motility and cause constipation that many women have never experienced before. I didn’t have a ton of bloating or constipation during my first pregnancy, and I credit this supplement. Most probiotics don’t include butyrate, but this one does. Mel calls butyrate “so amazing… so healing for the intestinal lining.” During breastfeeding, probiotics also transfer to baby through breast milk.

10. Magnesium

Mel also recommended magnesium supplementation during pregnancy for constipation management, so I’ve been taking that as well. Beyond constipation, magnesium is essential for over 300 enzymatic reactions and supports mitochondrial function. During pregnancy, magnesium requirements increase and deficiency is associated with preeclampsia, preterm labor, and fetal growth restriction. Mel also recommended additional magnesium supplementation during breastfeeding.

Protocol developed from discussions on The Science Of: Fertility podcast with Dr. Melissa Clark, ND. All research links included for Dr. Mel’s review and verification. Dosages should be individualized based on lab work and clinical assessment.

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Summer travel season is here. Most people associate getting sick with winter. But research published in JAMA found that 1 in 5 airline passengers develop upper respiratory symptoms within a week of flying, regardless of season. Summer travel means more flights, more airports, and more exposure. Your immune system doesn’t get a vacation just because you do.

I’ve been on more planes than I can count where everyone around me was coughing and sneezing and I worried about catching something. But I haven’t been sick in 7 years, despite the tens of thousands of miles of travel I’ve logged. When I’m traveling with my daughter, the anxiety is even higher.

I’ve already shared my daily immune hygiene routine, but air travel requires an extra level of care. This is what I do to protect myself when headed on trips.

All products are hyperlinked below — or browse my full ‘Travel Immunity Protocol’ ShopMy storefront here.

3–7 Days Before Your Flight

Most people don’t start thinking about travel immunity until they’re boarding the plane. But you have to spend some time prepping your body. It’s not much, but it will make a huge difference.

1. Beekeeper’s Naturals Propolis Immune Support Throat Spray – This is the foundation of my immunity routine. It’s why I started Beekeeper’s Naturals and I use it every day. But even if you don’t do it every day, you should definitely start at least one week before your flight. 3-5 sprays twice a day.

2. Beekeeper’s Naturals Propolis Nasal Spray – Another foundation of my daily immunity routine. Make sure to get 2 sprays in each nostril twice a day at least a week before travel. Our nasal spray also contains xylitol, which inhibits bacterial adhesion to nasal epithelium, keeping your nasal passages both moist and protected. Most people only think about their throat when they feel something coming on.

3. Vitamin D - Vitamin D activates antimicrobial peptides called cathelicidins and defensins — proteins your immune cells produce to kill pathogens on contact. Somewhere between 38–40% of people are deficient by the end of winter, and even in summer, levels may not be optimal. I take 5,000 IU daily with a meal (it’s fat-soluble, so take it with food). If you know your levels run low, a one-time 50,000 IU loading dose five days before travel is a reasonable strategy to discuss with your doctor.

4. NAC - N-acetylcysteine (600 mg, twice daily) is one of the most underrated immune supplements. It’s a direct precursor to glutathione (your body’s master antioxidant) and it thins respiratory mucus, which keeps your airways clear in that bone-dry cabin air. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 262 subjects, NAC didn’t prevent infection, but only 25% of infected NAC subjects developed symptoms compared to 79% on placebo. Your immune system handled it before you ever felt sick, which is exactly what you want.

5. Liposomal Vitamin C - I take 1–2 packets daily of our Vitamin C + Propolis Liposomal. The liposomal delivery significantly improves vitamin C bioavailability compared to standard ascorbic acid, and pairing it with propolis gives you both antioxidant support and antimicrobial coverage in one shot. Note, though, that this propolis won’t replace the mucosal barrier protection you get with the propolis throat spray and nasal spray. So I’d recommend doing all three.

Shop My Travel Protocol Items

6. DHA - I take Nordic Naturals DHA daily as a systemic inflammation modulator. Omega-3 fatty acids are precursors to resolvins and protectins, specialized molecules that actively resolve inflammation rather than just suppressing it. Flying is an inflammatory event and DHA helps your body clean up afterward.

7. Cut out sugar and alcohol - Research from the 1970s (and confirmed in subsequent studies) showed that sugar intake significantly reduces neutrophil phagocytic capacity (your white blood cells’ ability to eat pathogens) for several hours after consumption. Alcohol does the same. If you’re not already cutting out alcohol and sugar, the week before flying is the time to reduce your consumption or take a break.

8. Sleep 7–9 hours a night - Sleep deprivation suppresses NK cell activity dramatically. If you need help, low-dose melatonin (0.5–1 mg) is a reasonable tool—and melatonin itself is a potent antioxidant.

Day of Travel

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Continue everything from the week before, and add:

1. Immunity Lozenges – On the plane, I pop at least one of our Beekeeper’s Soothing Lozenges. They contain zinc, propolis, and vitamin D. What most people don’t realize is that zinc’s antiviral effect in the airways is largely local and topical—sucking on a lozenge lets zinc make direct contact with your throat mucosa, where it can interfere with viral replication right at the point of entry. A Cochrane meta-analysis of zinc lozenges found they reduced cold duration by about 33% when started within 24 hours of symptoms. Our lozenges also contain elderberry, which was tested in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial specifically on air travelers and found to significantly reduce cold duration and severity in those who got sick. Bonus: the sucking and swallowing motion helps equalize ear pressure during takeoff and landing. If your kids get ear pain on flights, our lollipops pull double duty.

2. Use my overhead air vent trick - This is counterintuitive, but open your air vent and point it directly at your face. Research in aerospace medicine shows this creates a cone of filtered, HEPA-cleaned air that deflects ambient particles away from your breathing zone. If you’re not wearing a mask, this is your best passive defense.

3. Hydrate aggressively with hydration packets - I’m generally not someone who thinks you need electrolyte packets every day. But flying is different. You’re losing moisture through respiration at an accelerated rate in that 10–20% humidity environment, and standard water intake doesn’t fully compensate. I like the Pedialyte packets because they use an osmolarity formula based on the WHO’s oral rehydration solution designed to maximize fluid absorption.

4. Move your body - Get up every 1–2 hours. Moving around on a plane isn’t just about blood clots. Circulation directly supports immune cell trafficking. Your immune cells need to move through your body to do their jobs, and sitting still for six hours slows that process. Calf raises and ankle rolls in your seat help. Deep breathing activates the vagus nerve, which lowers cortisol and shifts your nervous system out of fight-or-flight, directly supporting immune function.

5. Pack real food - Airline food is processed, high-sugar, and inflammatory, which is literally the opposite of what you want. I think airport food is an underrated factor in why we get sick on airplanes. I bring cut fruit and vegetables, kale chips, trail mix, nuts, dark chocolate (85%+), jerky, and hard-boiled eggs. Nutrient-dense, low-sugar, easy to pack.

6. Invest in comfort – I don’t think of a good eye mask and neck pillow as indulgences on a long flight. I see them as immune tools. Anything that helps you sleep on the plane is directly supporting your NK cell activity and immune recovery.

Air travel needs a stricter protocol, but the principle is the same one underneath everything I write about immune hygiene. Consistent, daily support will keep your immune system strong enough to handle what it encounters. You don’t wait until you have a cavity to brush your teeth. You don’t wait until you’re sick to support your immune system. And you definitely don’t wait until you’re 35,000 feet in the air in a metal tube full of recycled air and hope for the best.

I’ve flown a lot in the last seven years and haven’t gotten sick from a flight. It’s not because I’m lucky. It’s because I started prepping days before I got to the airport.

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Why Is This Blowing up?

First, last spring, California launched a first-of-its-kind pesticide notification system called SprayDays. If you live near farmland, you can sign up to get a text before carcinogenic fumigants are sprayed near your home or school. Over 4,300 residents in berry-growing counties including Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Ventura, have enrolled in the past year, and this March, the state published its first annual report, which drew a fresh wave of media attention. Thousands of parents are now living with these alerts as a regular part of their week.

Then last month, the Real Organic Podcast aired an episode featuring Omar Dieguez, who did a 30-day hunger strike in Watsonville (Driscoll’s headquarters) to push for buffer zones between pesticide spraying and schools. The clips took off on TikTok and Instagram.

Finally, the Driscoll’s name is getting people’s attention. Everyone knows them. Driscoll’s supplies roughly a third of the berries sold in America. But the concern is bigger than one company. It’s about a specific class of chemicals called fumigants being used at industrial scale across American agriculture.

Are Berries Giving My Child Cancer?

An EWG analysis found that a non-organic strawberry contains residues from an average of 8 different pesticides. They are the most pesticide-contaminated crops you can eat. So, if you can, you should definitely be buying organic strawberries, which a Mamavation analysis found to be pesticide residue free.

But the panic on social surrounding Driscoll’s berries actually doesn’t have anything to do with the pesticides that end up on the company’s fruit. It’s about the chemicals they spray in their soil, a particular class of agricultural chemicals called fumigants.

What are fumigants, and why should you care?

When you hear “pesticide,” you probably think of something sprayed on a plant. Glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) works that way. It’s absorbed through leaves and kills the plant. Fumigants are a different animal entirely. Think of it more like bug-bombing your house, except it’s an open field. Farmers inject liquid chemicals into the soil before planting. That liquid converts to gas, spreads through the soil, and kills everything including fungi, bacteria, nematodes, weed seeds etc.

The two primary fumigants used on strawberry farms are 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D) and chloropicrin. The EPA classifies 1,3-D as a likely human carcinogen. It’s banned in 40 countries. Chloropicrin was originally deployed as a chemical weapon in World War I. California strawberry farms alone use more than 9 million pounds of fumigants statewide, with roughly 80% of all pesticide weight on strawberries coming from fumigants.

And strawberries are just one crop. Fumigants are also used on potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, cotton, sugar beets, peppers, and nursery stock with over 160 million pounds applied annually across 1,275 counties.

The critical difference between fumigants and something like glyphosate is that fumigants are gases. They volatilize out of the soil and drift through the air, sometimes for miles.

Fumigants and Childhood Cancer

One of the things concerning people is that Santa Cruz County (the heart of Driscoll’s growing region) has one of the highest childhood cancer rates in California. It’s 38% above the state average. While it’s true that the sample size is small enough that this stat is not super reliable, it is more reliable when you consider the other data. Research from the University of Idaho and University of Northern Arizona found that cancer incidence correlated more strongly with fumigants in vegetable/fruit-producing areas than with herbicides in grain-producing areas.

Find Out If Fumigants Are Sprayed In Your County

I asked my team at Beekeeper’s Naturals to put together an interactive map, using publicly available data, of where fumigants are used most in America. Use the map below to find out if your county is one of them.

LA county, where I live, is one of the highest in the country. Yikes.

Explore the interactive version here!

What to do

If you live in a fumigant-spraying county:

• If you’re in California, sign up for SprayDays alerts.

• Close windows during spray events—fumigants are airborne, and that’s the primary exposure route.

• Reverse osmosis water filtration is worth having in areas with sandy soil, though air is the bigger concern for fumigants.

• Advocate locally! The biggest reason this story broke through is a California law that forced transparency. SprayDays exists because the state required it — not because the industry volunteered. That kind of change starts with your county board of supervisors, your state legislature, your local parent groups. Push for spray notification systems in your state, buffer zones around schools, and public pesticide-use reporting.

If you’re not in a fumigant-spraying county:

• Eat organic when you can. I know price (particularly these days) makes this difficult for a lot of people. But organic farming doesn’t use fumigants. The thing is, though, that Driscoll’s is the largest producer of organic berries. While they don’t use fumigants on their organic berries, we still want to show Driscoll’s that their inorganic practices are not okay. Buy locally and seasonally when you can. Summer is approaching, which makes this easier. Local farmers, even inorganic ones, tend to have better pesticide practices.

• The Farm Bill just passed the House, where a bipartisan 280-142 vote stripped provisions that would have shielded pesticide companies from state lawsuits. The Senate drafts its version next and there is talk about putting these shields back in. Tell your Senator to keep them out.

A Note About Fumigants and Bees

Those who read me regularly know I’m always concerned about the bees. There is little research about the effects of fumigants on bees. Here’s something that bothers me. Over 70% of native bee species in the US are ground-nesting. Fumigants are designed to turn soil into a gas chamber that kills every living thing in it. And yet there is virtually no research on what fumigation does to ground-nesting bee populations. But the studies we do have on soil pesticides and ground-nesting bees (using neonicotinoids, not fumigants) are ugly. Squash bees exposed to treated soil initiated 85% fewer nests and produced 89% fewer offspring. A 2025 Science paper called this a major regulatory blind spot: risk assessments use honeybees as the test species, and honeybees don’t nest in soil.

We need more research, but what’s out there suggests that fumigants are harming wild bees quite a bit

A Note About the Interactive Map

The data is from 2013-2017, which is the latest available data. Later this year, the USGS is expected to publish data from 2017-2024. We will update this tool when that data is published, but we don’t expect it to change drastically from the older data.

This map is for educational purposes only. It may contain some minor errors that could have occurred during data aggregation and processing.

Sources for this article:

1. SprayDays California

2. Real Organic Podcast: Omar Dieguez hunger strike episode

3. EWG: Pesticides on strawberries (USDA data)

4. USGS Pesticide National Synthesis Project

5. Interactive fumigant map (built from USGS data)

6. Lookout Santa Cruz: Dr. Valerie Bengal on pediatric cancer rates

7. UCLA Fielding School of Public Health: Childhood brain tumors and maternal pesticide exposure

8. Nature Health: Pesticide mixtures and cancer risk in Peru

9. USC Keck Medicine: Fruits, vegetables, and early-onset lung cancer

10. Mamavation: PFAS and pesticide testing of Driscoll’s strawberries

11. U.S. Senate contact page

12. Science bee research

It was definitely not a straight path. There were a lot of false starts and disappointments along the way. A lot of times I felt crazy or like I was a failure. In a lot of ways, I still can feel that way at times. But waayyy less often than I used to and I’ve learned to snap out of anxiety and back to reality pretty quickly. That feels like progress.

What follows isn’t a formula. It’s more an extremely oversimplified description of how I got from point A to point B in my own squiggly, roundabout way. Mixed in are some lessons I picked up on the winding path.

Feeling Hopeless

It was 2015, and I felt trapped in a job I hated. I was burnt out, I had barely any life outside of work, and no sense of purpose or identity. I was putting in long hours on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs — my second finance job, my second time hating it. I’d thought a more prestigious firm might do the trick. I was wrong.

I felt like I was doing a terrible job. The funny thing is, the people around me felt like I was doing a great job. I was getting mentorship and promotions and more money. But I had no idea where it was all leading. I looked at my manager and my manager’s manager and they all seemed miserable. They were making great money, but they always complained about how they didn’t have enough.

I started waking up every morning with panic attacks. The irony is that taking the safe path had made me more scared than I’d ever been.

I’m not going to say that I woke up and had an epiphany about what I should do, because I didn’t. It was more like, at some point I realized I couldn’t go on like this. I needed to make a change.

Tunneling Your Way Out

Sitting at my desk, my mind would drift to beekeeping. I’d started beekeeping in college. Post college, during every little bit of free time I had from my demanding job, I found myself beekeeping. Beekeeping was the exact opposite of working in finance. It was physical and meditative and messy. But it was still hard work. I was learning a lot.

I’d started beekeeping because I discovered an ingredient, propolis, that was made by the bees that completely transformed my health. For years, I had chronic tonsillitis that left me sick 2 weeks out of every month. My doctors ruled out a tonsillectomy because historically I did not react well to surgery and I am allergic to many antibiotics. It was just too high risk. So instead, I tried pretty much every natural remedy there was. I saw naturopaths, tried different strains of mushrooms, high vitamin C, anti-inflammatory diets. I spent thousands of dollars on these treatments and none of them were the answer.

In college, I was traveling in Europe when my health completely cratered. I stumbled into an Italian pharmacy and explained to the kind, knowledgeable pharmacist my situation. She said casually, “oh, you just need propolis.” I’d never even heard of propolis before, but after a few days of using it, it completely cured my illness. While it’s easy to find in Europe, when I got back home, I couldn’t find propolis anywhere. I went to a local sustainable beekeeper to learn how to start making my own. It continued working for me. I got sick much less often. And when I did get sick, my illnesses were shorter and less severe. Not having to constantly fight off illnesses completely transformed my life. My schoolwork got better, my friendships got deeper, I became more active.

After a while of making my own propolis, I had more than I could need, so I started bottling it and giving it to friends and family. It worked for them too. But after college, when I was broke and needed to find a job, it never occurred to me to beekeep full-time. Everyone around me expected me to use my education to go into a well-paying field and become “successful.” But now I was questioning those expectations. As I spent more time in the apiary I had more time to think. What if I made beekeeping my full-time profession? Instead of sitting at a desk making rich people more money, what if I worked to bring this natural ingredient that had changed my life to more people? To me, that felt meaningful. It felt way less scary than staying at my job.

But I didn’t quit right away. I pulled back. I stopped gunning for a promotion and did the bare minimum. I was selling my propolis at farmers’ markets on the weekends and found I couldn’t make enough to keep up with demand. So I researched supply chains, packaging, and shipping to scale while maintaining the quality of the formulations I was making locally. I set up a website and spent all my evenings packing boxes to fill growing orders. I spent my lunch hour at work, cold emailing buyers from the major retail chains. After thousands of emails, I finally got in touch with an amazing buy from Whole Foods.

At some point, it made sense to quit my job. Not a ton of sense. But enough that I could convince myself and my family that this was worth taking a gamble on.

Starting from Zero

When I told my manager at Goldman I was leaving to become a beekeeper, he tried to convince me to stay. It almost worked, but I realized his case was entirely shaped by his own experience. He was biased against risk, against betting on yourself, and against choosing meaning over money. Years later, I realize that he wanted me to stay not because I was particularly good at my job, but because if I walked away from everything he’d built his life around, what did that say about his choices? The only reason I bring this up is to say that no one has more insight into what’s right for you than you do. The doubt didn’t go away when I left, but what did change after I left was that I no longer let that doubt dictate my decisions.

The day after I quit, I sat down in my living room to work on my new business, and I realized I didn’t know where to start. I’d literally quit without setting up a road map first. Everything in me wanted to panic, but I started small. I started with the things I knew I was good at. Building relationships, setting a vision, doing research. For the stuff I was really terrible at, I read books, listened to podcasts, clumsily worked my way through and where possible got help.

I didn’t set out to turn my little business into a big one. I don’t think all businesses need to be big. But propolis had changed my life and I wanted it to help as many people as possible. In this mission, I followed the signals the world was giving me. I believe that, when you’re doing the thing you’re meant to be doing, the world responds to you. It opens up to you. It’s not that things become easy — far from it. But people can sense truth and if you’re doing something true to yourself, there are no limits to what they’ll do to help you.

Of course, the doubt didn’t go away immediately. Honestly, fully trusting in my intuition is something that’s only crystalized over the past few years and continues to strengthen every time I see the unexpected rewards of betting on yourself.

Surrounding Yourself With the Right People

One of the first beekeepers I sourced from was named Dimitri. He was based in Ontario, but originally he was from the Ukraine. He was so knowledgeable about his bees and the ingredients they made. Whenever I met with him, he would tell me a story from back home about how the people from his town used propolis or royal jelly or honey or pollen to cure an ailment–everything from burns to stomach aches. After each time I met with Dimitri, I’d leave skeptical, but then I would go home and do a deep dive to find a scientific basis for what he told me. 9 out of 10 times I could find a great, high-quality study backing it up. Those early relationships meant everything to me.

I found incredible beekeepers from all over the world willing to work with me. I found friends who were willing to let me sleep on their couch to save on rent. I found a brilliant co-founder who believed in what I wanted to build. And after some time bootstrapping and proving the concept I found investors who were willing to fund the vision.

This wasn’t easy. Particularly finding the right investors. On the rare occasion I sold them on investing in a natural health business, they’d question me when I got to the part where I said I wanted to do it with a sustainable and clean supply chain and I wanted to third-party test our products to meet strict EU standards. They’d say, “You don’t do business in Europe, why are you spending money and time complying with EU law?” Again, by the ninth or tenth time this happened I started doubting myself. But then that voice would come back and tell me that what I was doing was right — that it was ethical but that it would also be good business because I wasn’t the only one who was sick of pesticides, contaminants and weak testing standards, and I wasn’t the only one who wanted to do right by the planet. I was lucky enough to eventually find some amazing investors who saw it my way.

And then, one by one, I built the right team. At some point over the life of the company, I think I’ve done every role there is, from product developer to supply chain operator to finance to office manager. Doing each of those roles was invaluable experience to understand just what was needed to make the right hire. I encourage every founder I work with to perform all the roles in their company at least for a few months. We didn’t hire all at once. I didn’t take a lot of investment, so we grew slowly. But at some point, I looked around and realized I had an incredible team around me. When it really sunk in was when I had to stop convincing people to come join our team and they started trying to convince me that they were the right fit.

When you have the right people in your corner, things start to feel easier.

Remembering Why

Even with the right people around you, there are days when it becomes really hard to remember why you did this in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to build at Beekeeper’s Naturals. But I have had days when I’m running from a supply chain operations meeting to a marketing meeting to a finance meeting to a podcast appearance and I’m so in the weeds that I lose sight of the big picture. And I’ll be honest, on some days like this I feel very low.

That’s when I go back to the bees. There’s a beekeeper in the LA area that lets me come by and help out when I can. There’s always something to do there. I started Beekeeper’s Naturals to get closer to beekeeping, but the irony is that there were months — even years — when I had less time to beekeep than ever. At some point, I decided to make the time. Because it gives me perspective.

Did you know a honeybee can visit up to 2,000 flowers in a single day? And without the work of that bee, everything I did that day couldn’t exist. A bee doesn’t fly in a straight line. It zigzags from flower to flower, adjusting constantly, backtracking sometimes, covering miles of ground that would look completely chaotic if you mapped it out. But at the end of the day, the hive has everything it needs. Not because the bee had a perfect plan, but because it kept moving.

I think this perspective is the key to how we’ve been able to stay true to the values of Beekeeper’s Naturals for ten years. Through scaling it from a farmstand to a nationwide brand. It’s a perspective I could have never gotten if I stayed at a desk trading stocks. And it’s a perspective I’d encourage everyone to find on their own journey.

Ask yourself, what are your bees? What is the thing that can simultaneously show you the value and the uselessness of what you do every day? Maybe it’s sitting down to dinner every night with your family. Maybe it’s keeping a post-it with treasured advice from a mentor on your desk. Maybe it’s going to a conference to expand your knowledge and your community. You don’t have to be building a company to find your bees. You don’t even have to be following your passion in your career. But whatever you’re doing, I encourage you to find that link. Because I can tell you the thing that’s kept me going on my path has been preserving my link to the bees.

What are your bees? Tell me in the comments – I’d love to know.

I first heard about Richard Coy’s story when I was researching a pesticide called dicamba and the harm it can cause to bees. Dicamba was recently reapproved by the EPA after its legality was struck down by federal courts. Richard is a third-generation beekeeper who had been running the apiary his grandfather had set up in Arkansas in 1969. Richard had grown the family business into an operation with over 10,000 hives by 2017. Now he’s embroiled in a lawsuit against Bayer, and BASF, the two biggest chemical companies in the world.

Richard saw my article and reached out to me on social media thanking me for sharing his story. I contacted him and told him I wanted to do more. I was struck by his intelligence, his candor, and his courage. Richard’s story is emblematic of how broken our food system in this country really is, and it’s a profile in what it takes to try and change it.

Richard’s Story

That summer of 2017, Richard noticed a change in his hives. They had fewer bees. A lot fewer. “I started noticing that the bees were not collecting pollen, and they were not building a healthy population in their beehive. Also they weren’t collecting very much nectar,” Richard told me over a video call a few weeks ago. He was wearing a mesh hat with “Coy’s Honey Farm” stamped on the front and had an Arkansas accent that I found very charming.

Something I’ve learned in my decade plus of beekeeping is that experienced beekeepers know right away when something is wrong with their bees. Richard grew up with bees–he’s as experienced a beekeeper as I’ve ever met. What began in the summer of 2017 continued into 2018. The farm’s honey production was more than cut in half. Coming to terms with the fact that the situation would likely worsen, he made the decision to relocate his operation out of the state of Arkansas.

Richard believes that all of this is because of the pesticide dicamba. And the facts certainly seem to back him up. Dicamba tolerant soy and cotton seeds were introduced to US farmers in 2016 and “over-the-top” spraying of dicamba became much more widespread. A 2019 University of Mississippi report estimated that Arkansas had more crop damage from dicamba than any other state.

Dicamba isn’t a household name, but in Arkansas, it’s been at the center of farmer-on-farmer violence and one of the largest pesticide damage cases in US history. More so than other common pesticides, it has the ability to drift long distances from where it’s sprayed. This might be why the conflicts around dicamba in Arkansas have been so dramatic.

And it’s upended the lives of Richard Coy and his family. “We had to move our whole family and whole operation out of the state,” Richard told me. “It takes the whole family to run the business. We had to move my parents who are 86 and 85. It completely disrupted our life. We had to start over. New people. New relationships. It’s been seven years here in Mississippi and it’s still difficult.” They had to let go of any employee who couldn’t relocate with them. Some of those employees had worked for them for over ten years. In addition, they had to shutter their honey business, Crooked Creek Bee Co.

These days, he keeps his bees partially in a dicamba-free area of Mississippi, and partially in North Dakota. He has also spent significant money relocating bees and lost long-standing relationships with farmers. Richard’s brother had to move out to North Dakota full-time to keep the bees they have there. It’s literally broken up his family. “We spent 40 years building a business that it only took dicamba two years to destroy,” he said.

Richard is now suing a number of defendants, including Bayer and BASF, the world’s largest chemical company and the producer of dicamba. He filed suit in 2021. A trial date is set for October of this year. It’s a true David vs. Goliath story. A lawsuit was not his first resort. Among other steps, Richard contacted the EPA and filed a complaint years ago. He received no response. He was told by his lawyers that he was the only beekeeper to contact the EPA. “I think others are afraid to take on the system,” he told me. “Or at least they believe it won’t do any good.”

The System Is Broken And We Need to Fight It

The fact that Richard is the only beekeeper to stand up to this system is exactly why I wanted to highlight his story. I want more people to understand the courage, the effort, and the cost–both financial and otherwise–that it takes for a small family farmer like Richard to take on a broken system. It’s a system that cares more about the profits of multinational chemical companies than the livelihoods of small farmers and beekeepers like Richard. It cares more about exploiting natural resources for shareholder value than it does for the bees and the natural environment that we all depend on for survival. It cares more about the wealth of CEOs and board executives than it does about the health of American children.

I always told myself that whenever I had a platform, I would use it for good. I don’t have a massive platform, but I have a little one. And I feel honored for the opportunity to take a little time to highlight a story like Richard’s.

If agriculture continues relying on chemicals and focusing primarily on crops like corn, soybeans, and canola, he worries the future food system will be far less diverse. “I never thought I’d become an environmentalist,” he told me. “But after going through this experience has made me one. We have to protect our bees and we have to protect our planet.”

When I asked him what he most wanted people to do, he said he wanted people to hear and share his story. Please share Richard’s story as much as you can. And if you can, please support Coy’s Honey Farm. We’ll continue to stay in touch with Richard throughout his legal journey and will provide any updates or other ways to support him.

Also, Richard is not alone in suing over dicamba. Four organizations recently brought a lawsuit against the EPA for re-approving dicamba. They have been successful in very similar suits before. Donate to support their efforts.

The Center for Biological Diversity

The Center for Food Safety

The National Family Farm Coalition

The Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network

About Coy’s Honey Farm

Coy’s Honey Farm, Inc. was founded in the late 1960s to produce honey from agricultural fields in Northeast Arkansas. What started as a hobby has grown into a family beekeeping affair. As a fourth-generation beekeeping business, they are serious about beekeeping.

During the early years of beekeeping, Coy’s Honey Farm, Inc. concentrated on producing Soybean and Cotton Honey. Over time, they began to expand their operation. Their beehives travel the USA pollinating Almonds and producing delicious, golden 100% US honey.

The other day, my daughter had a playdate at a new friend’s house. I was sitting in the kitchen making small talk with her mom while she made us tea. She pulls out a jar of manuka honey. Out of curiosity I asked her why she bought it. “It’s supposed to be really good for you,” she said. “It’s, like, the Birkin of honey.”

I’ve been studying honey for well over a decade. And maybe my biggest frustration over that time has been watching manuka honey become this mythical cult-y health product. Don’t get me wrong. I love that people are talking about the medicinal benefits of honey. But it baffles me that manuka has gotten so much attention because the evidence for its superior effectiveness in most areas just isn’t there.

I think it’s time to debunk all the myths around manuka.

But before you think this is a straight hit piece, there is one place where manuka does outperform all other honeys. It’s in external wound care. Medihoney, a manuka-based wound dressing, received FDA clearance as a medical device. Clinical trials have shown it effective for chronic wounds, post-surgical sites, and burns. But that’s not why most people have a jar in their kitchen.

Myth #1 – Manuka is the only antibacterial honey

Manuka’s claim to fame is methylglyoxal, or MGO, a compound found at far higher concentrations in manuka than in other honeys. MGO gives manuka its “non-peroxide” antibacterial activity. And it’s true that manuka has MGO in much higher quantities than other honeys. But all raw honey is antibacterial, it just kills bacteria through a different mechanism than manuka. That mechanism works for most cases except when you put it on an external wound. That’s the only time you should really care about MGO.

Myth #2 – The higher the MGO the higher the honey quality

The higher the MGO concentration, the more expensive the jar of manuka. But MGO is one compound measuring one thing: non-peroxide antibacterial activity. Grading honey quality on MGO alone is like grading wine quality on alcohol content. It’s a number. It’s not a proxy for everything else.

Higher MGO doesn’t mean more antioxidants, or more anti-inflammatory compounds, or better flavor or more nutrients. It doesn’t even reliably predict stronger antibacterial activity. There is plenty of high-quality honey that has a fraction of the MGO of manuka.

Myth #3 - Manuka is the most expensive because it’s the highest quality

Manuka honey comes from bees foraging on the manuka bush (Leptospermum scoparium), native to New Zealand and parts of Australia. The bloom lasts 2-6 weeks per year, harvesting often requires helicopter access into remote terrain. That’s why it’s so expensive. But it’s not like a handbag. Scarcity doesn’t necessarily equal quality. Mainly, it means it’s less sustainable.

Myth #4 – Manuka is the best honey for gut health

A lot of people cite the fact that manuka has performed well against H. pylori. But every honey variety tested for H. pylori activity shows similar inhibition. It has to do with the flavonoid effect, which many honeys have. It’s not a manuka or MGO-specific case. If gut health is why you’re buying it, you’re paying a premium for something any quality raw honey does. Bee propolis actually has better gut health evidence than all honeys, including manuka. There’s a published randomized controlled trial for propolis and IBS.

Myth #5 – Manuka is the best honey for immunity

Manuka’s immune case is basically just its antibacterial story repackaged. And we’ve already covered why that story isn’t manuka-specific—that other honeys do the same thing. There are no RCTs showing manuka improves immune outcomes.

Propolis really outperforms manuka here. A double-blind RCT found propolis cleared upper respiratory infection symptoms two days faster than placebo (Esposito et al., 2020). A meta-analysis of 17 studies found it significantly reduced CRP and IL-6 — two of the most important markers of immune stress. Manuka has nothing close to that.

Myth #6 – Manuka is the best honey for a sore throat

Honey genuinely works for sore throats. A 2020 meta-analysis of 14 studies found honey outperformed standard care for upper respiratory symptoms including sore throat.

But those studies were testing multiple varieties of raw honey. Not manuka. And no RCT has shown manuka is better than regular honey for sore throat relief. The soothing mechanism has nothing to do with MGO. It’s more about the viscosity, osmotic activity, and flavonoids that any raw honey has.

Myth #7 – Manuka is a great anti-inflammatory and antioxidant

A 2024 study ran eight honeys through standard antioxidant tests, including manuka and buckwheat. Buckwheat came in nearly three times higher on total phenolic content and nearly doubled manuka’s score on actual antioxidant activity tests. The predictor wasn’t MGO, but color. Darker honey, more antioxidant activity.

Propolis is in a different category. It’s dense with specific bioactive polyphenols (CAPE, quercetin, pinocembrin) with the strongest evidence for anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. A 2024 analysis of 17 studies found propolis significantly reduced CRP and IL-6, two primary markers of inflammatory stress.

So Then Why Does Manuka Get So Much Buzz?

The short answer is that I don’t know. But here are my best theories:

1. Manuka has one FDA-cleared medical use (wound dressings) and most people don’t distinguish between that and a general FDA stamp of approval for everything medicinal.

2. MGO is a number on a label, and numbers feel scientific even when they’re measuring the wrong thing.

3. New Zealand is a great origin story. It’s remote and pristine…And koalas.

4. Expensive things feel medicinal. A $200 jar must be doing something a $30 or $40 jar can’t.

I think it’s probably all of these things working together.

What Should You Look for In Your Honey

1. Color – the darker the honey the better

2. Processing – raw honey still matters. Nothing pasteurized or processed.

3. Polyphenol and flavonoid content – or, if a company does testing on it, antioxidant activity.

4. Propolis content — some raw honeys retain more propolis naturally depending on how they’re filtered. Minimally filtered honey keeps more of it.

5. Third-party testing – ensure your honey is third-party tested for contaminants like pesticides (including glyphosate), heavy metals, and antibiotics.

What Actually Upsets Me About Manuka

Manuka isn’t a scam. Real UMF certified manuka is high-quality honey that tastes pretty delicious too. But the story around manuka is kind of a scam. And what upsets me so much is that there are incredible bee products like propolis, royal jelly, and dark honeys (like buckwheat) that have some incredible clinical evidence behind them. But manuka is getting all the credit. And not only that, when manuka turns out not to be the miracle cure it’s made out as, people lose trust in the medicinal power of those other products from the hive that actually do work.

Ok end of rant.

A quick disclaimer: I founded Beekeeper’s Naturals which makes honey and bee products including propolis, royal jelly, and bee pollen. We don’t sell manuka honey. This doesn’t mean I’m biased, though. I built my company around high-quality raw honey and propolis–not manuka–for a reason. If we wanted to, Beekeeper’s could easily get into the manuka honey game. But we won’t because we believe that other bee products are both better for you, and more sustainable than manuka.

Why do we need to save the bees? Do the bees even need saving anymore? What can I do as an individual? Isn’t it all just climate change and we’re doomed anyway?

I get asked questions like these all the time. And honestly, they’re good questions. In response, I worked with my friends at the UC Davis E. L. Niño Bee Lab to create this toolkit that breaks down exactly what “Save the Bees” means, why it should matter to you personally, and what you can do right now to make a difference.

Why We Need to Save the Bees

Animal pollinators, including honey bees, wild bees, butterflies, birds, and bats, help support roughly 35% of global food production. That means about one in every three bites of food you eat exists because something pollinated it. They are also responsible for pollinating over 40% of the wildflower pollination that other animals depend on.

If pollinators disappeared, we wouldn’t just lose some specialty crops. We’d lose a meaningful share of the nutrient-dense fruits, vegetables, nuts, and animal proteins that make up a healthy diet.

The Biggest Threats to the Bees

Pesticides

Pesticides weaken bees’ immune systems and interfere with their ability to navigate, forage, reproduce, and maintain healthy colonies. I’ve written extensively about the EPA’s ongoing approval of harmful pesticides including PFAS-containing chemicals and drift-prone herbicides like dicamba. As a beekeeper, I’ve seen the damage firsthand. The bees in our sustainable apiaries are thriving because we keep them away from pesticide exposure. Most bees aren’t so lucky.

Habitat Loss

Just as devastating, and less talked about. Urbanization, monoculture farming, and even well-meaning landscaping reduce the diversity of plants bees rely on. Without that diversity, bees aren’t getting the nutrients they need to build resilience against everything else coming at them.

A critical fact most people don’t know: about 70% of native bee species nest underground, not in hives. When we pave over land, cover everything in thick mulch, or maintain perfectly manicured lawns, we’re eliminating their homes.

Climate Change

Disrupts blooming cycles and reduces reliable food sources. When the flowers bees depend on bloom earlier or later than expected, or not at all, entire colonies lose access to the nutrition they need at critical moments.

Parasites and Disease

Especially Varroa mites, which weaken colonies from the inside. This is the stressor beekeepers deal with most directly. But bees with access to good nutrition and healthy environments can tolerate these pressures much better than bees that are already compromised.

None of these threats exist in isolation. It’s the interaction between them that’s doing the real damage. A bee colony dealing with Varroa mites in a landscape full of diverse flowers stands a fighting chance. A colony dealing with Varroa mites and pesticide exposure and poor nutrition in a monoculture environment can lead to colony collapse.

What You Can Actually Do

If you strip it back, a few things consistently make the biggest difference. And some of them are surprisingly simple.

1. Plant A Pollinator Friendly Garden

If you do one thing, make it this. Even a small space in an urban environment can support pollinators. The fastest way to help bees isn’t eliminating every possible threat. It’s giving them better food, more flowers, more diversity, and more consistent bloom across seasons.

How to start:

• Choose native, regionally appropriate plants

• Aim for blooms from early spring through late fall

• Mix it up! Bees and other pollinators thrive on diversity, and different species need different flower shapes and sizes

Best flowers for bees by season:

Spring: crocus, lavender, bluebells

Summer: sunflowers, bee balm, borage

Fall: asters, goldenrod, sedum

Find your region’s best plants:

The Pollinator Partnership has regional guides and a zip code lookup tool so you can find exactly which flowers and plants are best suited to where you live.

For community spaces:

If you garden in a community garden or public park, the Xerces Society will give you a pollinator habitat kit with the supplies you need to get started.

2. Create Habitat, Not Just Gardens

This doesn’t have to be complicated. Even one of these will make an impact.

• Place a shallow dish with stones so bees can land safely and drink

• Leave small wild areas or install bee hotels for solitary bees

• Leave some ground bare, since 70% of native bees nest underground and need open, sunny, well-drained soil to build their homes (if you have to mulch, use a thin layer of compost or leaves instead of wood bark)

• When flowers are done blooming, leave the stems standing — cavity-nesting bees like mason bees lay their eggs inside hollow stems, and in spring you can trim to 8–24 inches to create nesting habitat

• Skip excessive paving wherever possible

3. Ditch the Pesticides on Your Property

Don’t spray weedkiller on your lawn.

Don’t spray for mosquitoes (the Xerces Society has great alternatives for mosquito management at home). If you absolutely have to use a pesticide, choose a targeted organic product and never spray while flowers are blooming or directly onto soil.

Healthy native plants rarely need pesticides in the first place.

4. Stand Up to Big Ag

Pesticide companies have the power and influence to sway policy in their favor. We’ve seen it happen over and over. But public pressure works.

Stay informed:

Beyond Pesticides is the best resource for staying up to date on pesticide legislation. They have an “Actions Of the Week” feature where they ask you to do one thing each week, often tied to specific legislation. Sign up here to get updates directly to your inbox.

Vote for change:

Local and national elections shape environmental and agricultural policy more than most people realize. Understanding candidates’ positions on pollinator protection and pesticide regulation matters.

5. Eat Organic When You Can

This limits your own pesticide exposure and it’s a way to vote with your dollar. For many people, eating fully organic isn’t always accessible, so a practical place to start is with the most contaminated produce.

• EWG’s Shopper’s Guide highlights both the most and least contaminated produce to guide your organic shopping

• Look for Bee Better Certified products, which meet pollinator-friendly farming standards

6. Support Pollinator Research

A lot of what we know about bees comes from places like UC Davis. And a lot of what we don’t know yet still needs funding.

The UC Davis E. L. Niño Bee Lab conducts some of the most influential research in the world on pollinator health, ecosystems, and pesticide impacts.

You can give to the lab directly or you can purchase Beekeeper’s Naturals merch. 100% of our merch proceeds go to supporting the lab’s research.

7. Educate the Next Generation

Pollinator education builds long-term environmental stewardship. Start pollinator gardens at your kid’s school. Talk to your kids about why bees matter. Support pollinator literacy programs. The Bee Cause Project provides grants to set up educational bee habitats in schools.

Some Closing Inspo

Saving the bees isn’t about any single issue. It’s about how multiple pressures stack together and degrade the system that pollinators depend on.

Bees are far more resilient when they have access to diverse, high-quality forage and stable environments. They’re far more vulnerable when those systems fall apart.

The most effective solutions don’t focus on just one lever. They improve the overall conditions bees are living in. Every single one of us can do something about that, starting in our own backyards. Literally.

I founded a company that makes health products. I’ve spent nearly a decade obsessing over clean supply chains, third-party testing, and what actually goes into our bodies. But if someone told me they could only do one thing for their health, I wouldn’t tell them to go to the gym or eat cleaner. I’d tell them to take a hike with a friend. Preferably more than one friend. As many friends as they can find who will hit the trail with them.

Hiking is the antithesis of everything that the “wellness” industry has become. The industry has convinced us that health is a personal optimization project. It’s you and your body alone against the world. But two of the most well-supported predictors of good health and longevity don’t ever come up in the conversation: time in nature, and community.

Hiking with people you love is the one thing I’ve found that genuinely gives you both at once.

The Opposite of Wellness Culture

Wellness culture has a problem, and I say this as someone who is deeply embedded in it. It is almost pathologically individualistic. The implicit message is that health is a solo project: that if you just do the right things in the right sequence, you will win. Don’t get me wrong, supplements, clean living, the attention to what goes in your body, all of that matters. But there’s a danger if we focus so much on these little individual choices that we start to lose track of what can have the biggest impact. And the fact is that the research says community and time in nature are two of the biggest factors for overall health and longevity.

What the Research Says

The research backs this up. A landmark meta-analysis of 148 studies found that people with stronger social relationships had a 50% increased likelihood of survival compared to those with weaker ones. The researchers noted that the influence of social relationships on mortality risk is comparable in magnitude to well-established risk factors like smoking. More recent research from Cornell found that people with richer, more sustained social connections literally age more slowly at the cellular level, showing younger biological profiles on the epigenetic markers researchers use to estimate the pace of aging. No matter how many peptides you take, they can’t compete with having a robust community of friends and family.

The impact of nature on health is equally well-documented. Multiple studies have found meaningful associations between time in green spaces and reduced anxiety, improved mood, and lower rates of depression. But one of the most surprising findings I’ve come across is what happens to your immune system when you’re in a forest specifically. Trees release volatile organic compounds called phytoncides, and multiple studies have found that inhaling them measurably increases the activity of natural killer cells, the immune cells your body uses to fight off viruses and tumor cells. One study found the effect lasted more than 30 days after a single forest trip. City trips used as a comparison showed no such effect.

There’s something about actual trees, not just fresh air or exercise, that your immune system appears to recognize and respond to. The physical act of being in a landscape that is larger than you, older than you, doing something to the nervous system that a treadmill cannot replicate, turns out to be doing something to the immune system too.

Some Closing Thoughts

I don’t know about you, but my phone is mostly wellness influencers trying to sell me something and political catastrophizing. None of it makes me healthier. This article is as much a reminder for me as it is for you to unplug, find someone you love (or maybe even someone you don’t know that well yet) and hit a trail. Join a hiking group. Plan a camping getaway with the family. You’d be surprised at how hiking can build and deepen your community.

On February 18, the Trump administration signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to protect the domestic supply of glyphosate. The order handed Bayer, the conglomerate that makes glyphosate, a potential liability shield and declared its product a matter of national security.

One week later, RFK Jr. re-announced roughly $1 billion for a regenerative agriculture pilot that includes cover crops, soil health, and reduced chemical inputs. Most of this money, $700 million of it, was initially announced in December.

This is what a cover story looks like. You protect the company, then you tout the program that makes it look like you’re doing the opposite.

And $1 billion dollars may seem like a lot. But when put in context of everything else the administration is doing to help Bayer and other agricultural conglomerates, $1 billion is nothing. It’s also ultimately a rearrangement of money that previous administrations had already allocated for this move. And it comes after this administration cut thousands of jobs at the same agencies they are now directing this money to.

What A Real Solution Would Look Like

Weaning American agriculture off glyphosate requires a sustained, multi-billion dollar, multi-decade commitment — restructuring crop insurance, reorienting commodity markets, rebuilding the soil science and technical assistance infrastructure, and being in genuine tension with the companies profiting from the status quo rather than simultaneously handing them liability shields, tax cuts, and preemption provisions.

That kind of commitment would be expensive but we’re already paying tens if not hundreds of billions to line the pockets of corporations that make us sick. Let’s take that money away from them and put it to use to protect our health and reshape our food system for the future.

Also, I’d like to put this $1 billion in context, to really hammer home how insignificant it is in the grand scheme of things. Here are other numbers to help you understand:

$11 billion — what Bayer has already paid out to roughly 100,000 people who say Roundup gave them cancer. This isn’t a projected number. This is what they’ve already paid out.

$7.25 billion — what Bayer has proposed to pay to make the remaining 60,000 cases go away. They want to pay this. It’s a good deal for them. The settlement, the executive order, the Supreme Court case, and the farm bill’s preemption provision are, in Bayer’s own words, “mutually reinforcing steps” in a strategy to contain the litigation. The $1 billion pilot is happening inside this same policy moment.

$1.8 billion — what Bayer spends annually on legal fees for glyphosate litigation alone. The $1 billion pilot costs less than seven months of their lawyers.

$24 billion — Bayer’s Crop Science revenue in 2024. The division that makes glyphosate and the seeds engineered to depend on it.

2.5 billion – the estimated corporate tax savings Bayer stands to receive from the One Big Beautiful Bill over the next decade, once the litigation settles and U.S. taxable income is no longer suppressed by legal costs.

$4 billion — the annual size of the North American glyphosate market.

$12 billion — the size of the North American pesticide market overall.

$2.5 billion — what the Inflation Reduction Act had projected to spend specifically on cover crops and integrated weed management through EQIP and CSP. The same practices this $1 billion pilot claims to promote. That funding was stripped. The climate-smart earmarks were eliminated, the savings redirected to commodity programs and crop insurance for large farms. Then a $1 billion pilot was announced for the same practices, rebranded from “climate-smart” to MAHA.

2,400 — the number of NRCS staff cut in 2025. These are the very same people who would need to process applications, conduct site visits, build farm plans, and verify outcomes to ensure this $1 billion pilot is successful.

Hundreds of billions — what federal commodity programs paid out in monocrop subsidies between 1995 and 2021. Subsidies that made glyphosate-dependent monoculture the economically rational choice for millions of farmers. You don’t subsidize a system for three decades and undo it with a one-year pilot.

$10.8 billion — the increase in farmer input costs from tariffs on Moroccan phosphate fertilizer imports. Those tariffs generated a $23 billion windfall for the domestic fertilizer industry that lobbied for them. The executive order that preceded this pilot invoked the Defense Production Act to protect phosphorus used in glyphosate manufacturing — which represents about 1.2% of U.S. phosphorus demand. It had nothing to say about phosphate fertilizer, which is what farmers actually need.

What We Should Be Doing

Keep putting pressure on RFK Jr. and the administration. The re-announcement of this pilot program after the executive order shows they’re worried. They’re worried about losing support from the people who care about this issue. That gives us power. But it’s only power if we keep up the pressure. Don’t stop talking about this. Don’t stop caring about this.

I know seeing things like the glyphosate executive order can be discouraging, but we are closer to reshaping our food system than we have been in decades. Bayer is scared. That’s why they’re putting so much pressure on the administration to do something. But we’re putting pressure on them too. Don’t let up.

I have a friend whose seasonal allergies are so bad that when she showed me the photo from her scratch test, it looked like a red monster had taken over her entire back. She’s tried every OTC medication on the market. Nothing really works.

She’s not alone. I talk to people about health all day, and seasonal allergies might be the one area where I hear the most universal frustration. Smart, health-conscious people who every spring and fall are completely miserable, popping Zyrtec like candy and getting only the slightest bit of relief.

“I feel like big pharma just hasn’t figured this one out,” my friend Ilan told me recently. I’d amend that a little. I’d say that big pharma has figured out exactly one piece of the puzzle — histamine — and sold it to us as the whole solution.

That gap is what made me want to sit down with Dr. Daniel Clark, an integrative medicine physician on the Beekeeper’s Naturals medical advisory board. I wanted to ask him the questions I keep hearing from friends, readers, and basically everyone I know who dreads pollen season. What’s actually going on when OTC meds don’t work? What does the research say about alternatives? And is there a way to actually address the underlying problem instead of just managing it year after year?

Here’s what he told me.

1. Why do so many people feel like OTC allergy meds just… don’t work? For someone who’s tried everything at the drugstore and still feels miserable, what’s actually going on physiologically. What are they missing?

OTC allergy medications mainly focus on one pathway: histamines. Histamines are a natural compound your immune system produces to trigger inflammation and other symptoms in response to perceived threats. Blocking histamines can alleviate symptoms like itching, sneezing, and watery eyes, but allergic inflammation involves more than just histamine. Other players like leukotrienes, prostaglandins, cytokines, and mast-cell activation are also in the mix. So, if histamine isn’t the main culprit behind someone’s symptoms, antihistamines might not do much. And with ongoing exposure it’s very possible your immune response may evolve into a more complicated, persistent inflammatory state. In either case, antihistamines are just dealing with a fraction of the problem.

Also, for people who have congestion, that’s not just a histamine issue. That stuffy, blocked-nose sensation is mainly caused by vascular swelling and chronic inflammation, rather than histamine itself. This explains why antihistamines can help with sneezing and itching but often do little for nasal congestion unless combined with intranasal anti-inflammatory strategies.

It’s also worth noting that not everything that feels like “allergies” actually is. Conditions like non-allergic rhinitis, mold exposure, air pollution, reflux, hormonal changes, or autonomic dysfunction can all mimic allergic symptoms and won’t respond to antihistamines.

2. Non-drowsy antihistamines sound harmless. Are they? What are the overlooked downsides of taking meds like Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra every day for months (or years)?

Non-drowsy antihistamines are generally considered safe, and for a lot of folks, they really do provide relief. But just because they’re labeled “safe” doesn’t mean they’re without side effects, especially when taken daily over long periods.

Histamine–the thing these meds are blocking–isn’t just some “allergy chemical.” It’s involved in wakefulness, cognitive function, gut movement, immune responses, and even how we perform during exercise. Blocking these receptors over a long time can subtly disrupt these systems, sometimes leading to fatigue, brain fog, dry eyes, constipation, or a lack of motivation.

If someone finds they need anti-histamines every single day just to get by, it’s usually a good idea to take a step back and consider why their immune system is still on high alert, rather than just continuing to block one pathway indefinitely.

3. Why do habit-forming nasal sprays like Afrin provide such dramatic relief? What’s the biological cost of relying on them? What is rebound congestion, and why is it so hard to break once it starts?

Afrin works wonders not by tackling inflammation, but by cutting off blood flow. Less blood flow means less swelling in the tissues, which leads to suddenly clear airways. It’s a fast fix that’s incredibly effective.

However with repeated use, your body adapts by ramping up its vasodilatory pathways, making it less responsive to the spray. When the effects wear off, the blood vessels can rebound wider than before, leading to even worse congestion. Your nose feels “blocked” until you use the medication again, creating an endless cycle.

Stopping Afrin suddenly means enduring several days of intense congestion while your blood vessels slowly relearn how to regulate themselves. People often relapse because the immediate relief is tempting, while the recovery process is slow and uncomfortable.

4. What alternative approaches to allergy relief do you see your patients having success with? What does the research say about these treatments?

Many patients discover that integrative approaches can provide significant relief, especially when the focus shifts from merely suppressing symptoms to addressing the root causes of allergic inflammation. These methods may not work instantly like flipping a switch, but they often offer longer-lasting benefits.

Intranasal sprays (saline + xylitol + propolis)

These sprays are effective because they target the issue locally rather than systemically.

• Saline helps clear mucus, dilutes allergens, and rehydrates irritated nasal tissues.

• Xylitol seems to reduce the ability of bacteria to stick and form biofilms, which is important since chronic nasal irritation often coincides with a mild microbial imbalance.

• Propolis boasts antimicrobial, antioxidant, and mast-cell-stabilizing properties, potentially helping to reduce local inflammatory signals in the nasal mucosa.

Plausible mechanism:

A lower allergen load, a healthier epithelial barrier, and reduced mast cell activation. In simpler terms, there are fewer triggers affecting a calmer surface.

What the research suggests:

Saline irrigation is well-supported for treating allergic rhinitis. While the evidence for xylitol and propolis is smaller, it’s growing, showing their antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effects, especially for chronic or recurring nasal symptoms. The strength of this approach lies in its biological plausibility and consistent clinical responses, even if large randomized controlled trials are still limited.

Oral supplements like quercetin, bromelain, propolis, and nettle leaf

These can be particularly effective for those dealing with systemic allergic reactions rather than just localized symptoms.

• Quercetin acts as a stabilizer for mast cells and helps to curb histamine release.

• Bromelain might enhance the absorption of flavonoids and has its own

anti-inflammatory properties.

• Propolis aids in immune modulation and boosts antioxidant defenses.

• Nettle leaf offers mild antihistamine and anti-inflammatory effects, with some evidence suggesting it can alleviate symptoms of allergic rhinitis.

Plausible mechanism:

Rather than just blocking histamine after it’s released, these compounds work by reducing mast-cell degranulation and inflammatory signaling earlier in the process, which helps to lessen the overall allergic response.

These solutions won’t completely eliminate allergies, but they can significantly reduce immune overreactions, tissue irritation, and the burden of exposure. When used consistently and with intention, they can often change the allergic landscape itself, not just mask the symptoms on the surface.

5. Is there any evidence that local honey helps with allergies? How about local bee pollen?

The evidence for local honey or bee pollen helping seasonal allergies is mixed. Human studies overall show minimal improvement in allergy symptoms during pollen season; some show small benefits, others no difference. Animal studies are more promising, suggesting reduced mast cell activation and a dampened allergic response, but it’s unclear how well this translates to humans.

Most studies are also short-term, so the idea that long-term exposure to local allergens might “train” the immune system remains theoretical. Anecdotally, many people report improvement, though it’s uncertain whether this reflects immune tolerance, mild anti-inflammatory effects, mast cell stabilization, or placebo.

Honestly, there is better evidence for the integrated, natural solutions like propolis quercetin, bromelain etc. I suggested above than there is for local honey.

6. Do HEPA air filters help with seasonal allergies-or is it just expensive peace of mind? If so, what are some best practices for using these for allergies?

HEPA air filters can be a game-changer for seasonal allergies, but it’s all about choosing and using them the right way.

Best practices for allergy relief

• Keep them running continuously during allergy season (not just when you start sneezing)

• Focus on bedrooms: getting 8 hours of cleaner air can make a big difference

• Keep windows shut when pollen counts are high

• Change the filters regularly (clogged filters can really hurt performance)

Key specs to look for

• True HEPA (H13 or equivalent): captures at least 99.97% of particles that are 0.3 microns or larger

• Right room coverage: make sure the unit fits the size of your space

• High CADR rating (Clean Air Delivery Rate) – the higher, the quicker the air gets cleaned

• Quiet low-speed operation: makes it easier to use them around the clock, especially at night

What they won’t do

They won’t solve problems like outdoor exposure, nasal inflammation, or immune issues all by themselves. But when used as part of a comprehensive approach, they can be really beneficial, especially for those who find their symptoms get worse indoors.

7. Why do allergies often show up early in life? Can kids outgrow them? Are kids more responsive to certain interventions than adults, and are there things we should avoid doing too early?

Allergies often show up early in life because the immune system is still figuring out what’s harmful and what’s not. Many kids outgrow their allergies. As their immune systems mature and learn to tolerate more, symptoms can fade or even vanish, especially with food allergies and some seasonal ones. However, if they keep being exposed to allergens and inflammation continues, it can “lock in” those allergic responses, making them tougher to change later on.

Interventions that cut down on exposure, support barrier health, and promote immune tolerance tend to work better when kids are younger, rather than after years of chronic inflammation.

What tends to help early on:

- Supporting healthy gut and airway barriers

- Reducing the load of allergens instead of just treating symptoms

- Avoiding unnecessary antibiotics and excessive use of antiseptics when possible

- Allowing safe exposure to microbes and the environment to help train the immune system

What to be cautious about:

- Relying too much on daily medications that just suppress symptoms without reevaluating

- Over-sanitizing environments during crucial immune-training years

- Treating every runny nose as a problem instead of a part of immune development

8. What’s your opinion of allergy shots? Given the time investment, are they worth the payoff?

Allergy shots are one of the few treatments that can actually change the course of allergic disease instead of just managing the symptoms.

These shots work by gradually retraining your immune system through controlled exposure to specific allergens. However, there’s a tradeoff: you’ll need to commit to weekly build-up injections followed by monthly maintenance for 3 to 5 years. That’s a significant time investment, and the results aren’t immediate. You typically start to notice benefits after several months, not just a few weeks.

These shots tend to be most beneficial for individuals with moderate to severe allergies, clear triggers, poor responses to medications, or those who experience side effects from their meds. For those with mild or occasional symptoms, the effort often doesn’t seem worth it.

Dr. Daniel Clark is a licensed Naturopathic Doctor with a focus on regenerative and integrative medicine. He’s also a member of the Beekeeper’s Naturals Medical Advisory Board.

When I became a mom, I had managed to go 5 years without getting sick. When my daughter arrived, I was, of course, overjoyed, but I also assumed my streak of not getting sick would soon come to an end. I was pleasantly surprised that this assumption was wrong.

Not only have I avoided getting sick in motherhood, but my daughter has rarely gotten sick in her first two years (she just turned 2 the other week). It’s not like I’ve kept her in a bubble. Quite the opposite. She has traveled to Vancouver, Toronto, Amsterdam, Sweden, Costa Rica, Mexico, New York, Austin, and France. For the past few months, she has been in programs five days a week, in rooms with kids who show up with runny noses and coughs. She has never had a fever, an ear infection, or even a bad cold.

I’m not writing this to brag. I’m confident enough now enough in our routine that I want to share it with others. I’ve been running a similar experiment on myself for the past 7 years, with great results. And, since my daughter was 6 months old, I’ve adapted a version of it for her.

It isn’t so much an experiment as it is a shift in mindset toward treating my immune system like I treat my teeth. I call it “Immune Hygiene” just like oral hygiene. Oral hygiene means you don’t wait until you have a cavity to start brushing. You build the habit before the problem arrives, and you do it every day. The same logic applies to immunity. It applies to kids’ immunity, too. And if anything, it applies more urgently, because the early years are when the immune system is actually being built. What you do now shapes how that system functions for the rest of their life.

Here’s what my daughter’s Immune Hygiene routine has looked like at each age.

8 Months: Laying the Foundation

At eight months I kept things minimal, because I was breastfeeding and she was still getting a lot of immune support naturally, and I didn’t want to overload a system that was just getting started.

Propolis

Once a week, one spray of Beekeeper’s Naturals Kid’s Propolis Immune Support Throat Spray.

Propolis is the resinous substance bees produce to protect their hives from bacteria, viruses, and fungi, and the research behind it has always been compelling to me. Beyond its antimicrobial properties, emerging evidence suggests propolis acts in a prebiotic-like way in the gut, encouraging the growth of beneficial bacteria while suppressing harmful ones and reinforcing the gut lining. Since roughly 70% of the immune system lives in the gut, I wanted to start supporting that foundation early, even at a low dose.

Something to note here is that our Beekeeper’s Naturals propolis bottles say they are safe for ages 1 and up. This is for a few reasons. 1) There is some honey in our propolis spray and for any product with honey, there is a risk of botulism for kids under 1 year. Given my familiarity with bee products I was comfortable giving my daughter our product. 2) There is the potential for an allergic reaction with all bee products at any age. 3) There isn’t enough data on the safety of propolis for infants, so we abide by the precautionary principle. For my daughter, I believed the benefits of giving her this weekly dose of propolis far outweighed the potential risks AND that was a personal decision that was guided and monitored by our pediatrician. Please consult your doctor before giving your child propolis or any bee product. If you’re concerned, this piece of the routine can be held off until the age of 1 and still be extremely effective.

Omega-3 DHA + Vitamin D

Nordic Naturals Baby’s DHA, daily added directly to her milk for brain development, reducing whole-body inflammation, and immune support.

12 Months: Moving to a Daily Routine

At one year, I shifted from once-a-week propolis to a daily routine. Her world was expanding and I wanted her immune hygiene to be consistent before her exposures really picked up.

Propolis (Throat and Nasal)

1. Two sprays of the Kid’s propolis throat spray every day

2. Beekeeper’s Naturals Kid’s Saline Nasal Mist used strategically before any significant exposure: travel, playdates, family gatherings.

She wasn’t initially enthusiastic about the nasal spray, so I didn’t force it into the daily routine, but I used it reliably whenever she was heading somewhere with real exposure risk. The reasoning is the same as it is for adults: the nose and throat are the two main entry points for pathogens, and covering only one of them means you’re leaving yourself half-protected.

Probiotic

Culturelle Kid’s Probiotic powder mixed into her milk, which I started at this age to continue supporting her microbiome development. Propolis was already working on the gut lining, and I wanted probiotic support layered on top of that as her diet became more varied and her system was doing more work.

Omega-3 DHA

At 12 months, you can switch to the higher dose Nordic Naturals Children’s DHA Xtra. I find it’s best when given in milk, juice, or other drinks, because the taste on its own isn’t great.

Vitamin D

The Children’s Xtra DHA doesn’t have vitamin D like the Baby DHA. So I added 1 drop of Thorn liquid vitamin D as well.

Age 2 and up: The Full Current Routine

She’s in programs five days a week now, which is the phase where I hear most parents start talking about being constantly sick. That hasn’t been our experience, and the routine she’s on right now is the most complete version of what I’ve been building toward.

Propolis

Kids’ propolis spray every single day, without exception. This is the foundation that everything else sits on, and if I had to tell a parent to do just one thing from this list, it would be this.

Propolis Lollipops

She thinks these are a treat, which is half the point. Beyond the propolis, they deliver zinc in a format that actually makes sense physiologically. Research on zinc consistently shows that its effectiveness against cold viruses is largely a function of local contact with the throat’s mucosal lining, which means slowly dissolving something in the mouth is genuinely more effective for this purpose than swallowing a pill or a drop. A lollipop she’s excited about is more reliable than a supplement she resists.

Liposomal Vitamin C

Once a week unless we’re traveling (more on that below).

Omega-3

Daily, and we’ve switched to Nordic Naturals algae-based omega-3.

Probiotic

Culturelle probiotic powder in her bedtime milk, still every night.

Vitamin D

Between sun exposure where we live, the lollipops, and the weekly vitamin C, I’ve stopped doing a separate drop. She’s covered without it at this stage.

Travel Support

Kids’ immune systems need additional support when traveling. Airplanes, airports, new germs, can all tax their little immune systems just like (if not more) than ours. Here’s what I give her for extra support when we travel.

Vitamin A for Travel

This is something I worked through with my doctors and I’d encourage you to do the same rather than just copy what I did, because every child’s situation is different. For travel to higher-risk destinations before her vaccination schedule was complete, I gave her 5,000 IU daily vitamin A for ten days beforehand.

Vitamin C for Travel

Beekeeper’s Naturals Kid’s Liposomal Vitamin C (500mg) starting three days before travel and continuing three days after. The liposomal formulation matters here because it’s significantly better absorbed than standard vitamin C, which is the difference between actually moving the needle on immune support and just passing it through.

Propolis

Before any significant trip, I bumped her to two throat sprays and one nasal spray in each nostril, starting at least three days out and continuing through the trip. There were times during this period when she’d sound a little congested after a big exposure, and by the end of the day she’d be completely fine. Her system was doing its job.

The Dietary Piece

Diet is very important for immunity. I cook her vegetables in bone broth and we don’t do refined sugar at home. I know the sugar thing raises eyebrows at birthday parties, but sugar is a real and meaningful immune suppressor, and a developing microbiome doesn’t need the disruption. We bake at home using honey instead, and nothing we give her has artificial food dyes. She also drinks a lot of water. None of this is dramatic, but all of it matters.

What I Actually Believe After Two Years of This

The phase that most parents dread is the one we’re in right now, and I kept waiting for it to get hard. It hasn’t. I want to be honest that I don’t know exactly which parts of this routine deserve the most credit, and I’m not claiming this is a guaranteed outcome for every child. But I do believe, more than I did when I started, that what you do in the first two years of a child’s life has an outsized effect on how their immune system learns to function. Immune hygiene for kids isn’t about being precious or extreme. It’s about being consistent, starting earlier than you think you need to, and building habits before the exposures arrive rather than scrambling once they do.

If you have questions about any part of this, or if you’re doing something that works with your own kids, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Last week, the EPA reapproved dicamba, a drift-prone herbicide that federal courts have struck down twice as unsafe. As someone who keeps bees, this one hits close to home. Dicamba has already forced beekeepers out of business and destroyed millions of acres of crops. Now the EPA is bringing it back with even weaker protections than before.

The courts weren’t mincing words when they rejected dicamba. They found the EPA’s safety claims were “irresponsible and unlawful.” But EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, working with Kyle Kunkler (a former dicamba lobbyist who now runs the EPA’s pesticides office), decided to approve it anyway. They’re calling it “the strongest protections in agency history.” But the reality is the opposite.

Here’s what they actually did:

1. They eliminated the volatility buffer that protected endangered species.

2. They replaced calendar cutoff dates that states had fought hard to implement with temperature-based restrictions that have already failed in the past and are nearly impossible to enforce.

3. They kept the same limited spray drift buffers that were proven ineffective in previous registrations.

What Makes Dicamba So Harmful To Humans

National Cancer Institute scientists found that farmers most highly exposed to dicamba had elevated risk of liver and bile duct cancer. Canadian researchers found higher rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma among farmers who used it. Missouri scientists have documented toxic rainfall in areas where dicamba is heavily used. These aren’t hypothetical risks. These are measurable health outcomes in real people.

“The industry cronies at the EPA just approved a pesticide that they know drifts for miles and poisons organic crops, backyard gardens and 100-year-old trees,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

What Makes Dicamba So Harmful To Bees and The Environment

Dicamba doesn’t just drift on the wind like other pesticides. It volatilizes, which means it evaporates into vapor and creates toxic clouds that can travel for miles for days after application. You could be living nowhere near a farm and wake up to find your tomato plants shriveled and dying because someone sprayed dicamba miles away. Small farms growing real food for their communities have been devastated by dicamba drift. And organic farmers face losing their certification because of contamination they can’t control.

The bee situation is even worse. I want you to hear the story of Richard Coy, who ran Arkansas’ largest commercial beekeeping operation. After dicamba was sprayed in Arkansas, his hives that used to produce 100 pounds of honey dropped to barely 50 pounds. The flowering plants his bees relied on, redvine and button willow, were destroyed by dicamba drift. He lost over a million dollars in honey and pollination contracts. Eventually, he had to close Crooked Creek Bee Co. entirely and move his whole operation to Mississippi just to escape dicamba.

And Richard is not alone. Beekeepers across multiple states have reported sharp drops in honey production.. Even at extremely low exposure levels, dicamba delays flowering and reduces how much nectar and pollen plants produce. Bees literally starve because there’s nothing left for them to forage.

The elimination of endangered species protections means even less protection for the habitats that support rusty patched bumblebees, monarch butterflies, and other pollinators already on the edge of extinction.

What’s Next?

The same organizations that successfully challenged dicamba in court twice before are preparing to sue again. That’s the Center for Food Safety, Center for Biological Diversity, National Family Farm Coalition, and Pesticide Action Network. Based on the EPA’s track record with dicamba and the fact that this approval has even weaker protections than the versions courts already struck down, another lawsuit seems inevitable.

If you want to support the fight against this, donating to those four organizations are your best bet. They’ve won before and they know how to hold the EPA accountable when the agency prioritizes chemical company profits over public health.

This EPA Lets Us Down Again

It seems like I’m having to write one of these every week. It’s exhausting. But we can’t let these people win. Because this is exactly what regulatory capture looks like. We have a former industry lobbyist who approves a product his former employers wanted, ignoring two different federal courts that said it was too dangerous, while claiming he’s implementing the strongest protections ever. Meanwhile, beekeepers are going out of business, gardeners and organic farmers are watching their plants die, and farmers are getting exposed to chemicals linked to cancer.

We deserve better than this.

I haven’t gotten sick in 7 years. Really. And I’ve (almost) made it through another winter without getting sick. I’m not saying this to brag, because I think anyone can do it. I’m not some perfect specimen of health. I don’t live in a bubble. I drink sometimes, I eat processed food sometimes, I’m exposed to environmental toxins (despite my best efforts).

But I’ve been running this experiment on myself long enough that I’m starting to develop a simple hypothesis: you have to treat your immune system like you treat your teeth. I’ve started calling it immune hygiene.

We talk about good oral hygiene all the time. We know the drill. Brush twice a day. Floss once a day. Avoid sugar when you can. You’ll get cavities otherwise. Good oral hygiene doesn’t mean you’ll never get a cavity, but it dramatically decreases your chances. Same thing with your immune system.

Just like oral hygiene (or personal hygiene or your skincare routine), immune hygiene means the small, daily actions you can take to support your immune system.

As many of you know, I struggled for years with constantly getting sick. Propolis changed all of that for me. But it wasn’t until I started this daily immune hygiene routine that I started my streak of 7 years without being sick: no colds, no flu, nothing.

We’re in the middle of winter. I want to broaden the experiment and I’d love you guys—my Substack community—to help me. Try my immunity hygiene routine for the rest of the season. I want to use the Substack group chat to keep track of how it’s going and share tips as we go along (more on that at the end).

My Daily Immune Hygiene Routine

I do this routine right after I brush my teeth and do my morning and evening skincare. Of those three routines, this is by far the easiest. Here’s what I do every single day to support my immune system. It takes about three minutes total.

Bee Propolis

Right after my morning and evening skincare routine, I use propolis throat spray and propolis nasal spray. This is the lynchpin of the routine. If you’re only going to do one step, make it this.

Your nose and throat are the main entry points for germs. Covering just one is like locking your front door but leaving the back door wide open.

The nasal spray creates a protective barrier in your nasal passages where viruses first try to take hold, while the throat spray works further down the respiratory tract. Research shows propolis has broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against bacteria, viruses, and fungi. The flavonoids and phenolic compounds in propolis disrupt the cell membranes of pathogens and have anti-inflammatory effects that support your body’s natural defenses.

Propolis changed my health. I think it can change yours too. Especially if you get into the habit of using it daily.

Liposomal Vitamin C

Once in the morning, I take liposomal vitamin C. With most vitamins, you don’t get nearly the same benefits in supplement form as you do in food. But vitamin C is pretty well absorbed by the body as a supplement, particularly as a more bioavailable, liposomal formulation.

Recent research shows that liposomal vitamin C provides significantly higher absorption than standard vitamin C.

A 3 in 1 Gut Health Supplement

Once in the morning, I take Beekeeper’s Naturals Complete Gut Health. We underrate our gut’s role in immunity. We formulated this specifically for immunity support. About 70% of your immune system lives in your gut, and research shows that daily probiotic use can significantly strengthen immune function.

Studies have found that probiotics regulate the functions of immune cells throughout your body, not just in your gut, and that these benefits build over time with daily use.

Vitamin D

There’s no replacement for the immune-supporting effects of sunlight. But we all know that in the winter, sunlight is harder to come by. Research shows this is a real problem. Multiple studies have found that vitamin D levels are consistently lower in winter than in other seasons, with deficiency rates approximately double in winter and spring compared to summer and autumn.

At northern latitudes, UVB radiation in winter is insufficient to stimulate vitamin D synthesis in the skin. Your body stores vitamin D in your liver and fat cells during summer to last through winter, but modern indoor lifestyles mean most of us don’t build up adequate stores. Even in sunny locations like South Florida, 38-40% of people had vitamin D deficiency at the end of winter.

That’s when I supplement with vitamin D. I take Thorne vitamin D. They have strong testing standards and good manufacturing practices.

Cut Out (Or Cut Down) Sugar

Sugar is a major immune suppressor. So much in our diet affects immunity. You don’t need me to tell you to eat well and how to eat well for immune support. You know that already. But if you asked me to isolate the biggest dietary impact on immunity, it would be sugar. If you can cut it out, or even just cut down, it would go a long way towards improving your immune hygiene.

I’m not perfect about this. I had two high protein (and very high sugar) cookies today. You don’t have to be perfect, either. It’s like sugar and cavities. You can have some, just don’t go crazy and then forget to brush your teeth.

Drink Plenty of Water

You know this already, but hydration is a great immunity booster. And you don’t need me to tell you to drink more water. You know that the research says baseline daily intake should be 2.7 liters for women and 3.7 a day for men. But one of the things to keep in mind is that if you’re consistently exercising or saunaing (both good immunity hacks btw) you’ll need to drink even more water than this. Same goes for traveling.

A good water bottle can be game changing for helping your water intake. I love my Hydroflask. So many metal water bottles can be coated with lead, so it’s important to watch out for that.

How to Think About Immune Hygiene

The key to immune hygiene isn’t doing something extreme when you’re already sick. It’s the consistent, daily support that keeps your immune system strong enough to fight off threats before they take hold.

Think about it this way: you don’t wait until you have a cavity to start brushing your teeth. You brush everyday to prevent the cavity in the first place. That’s what immune hygiene is all about.

I’m not saying this routine is magic. I’m sure I will get sick at some point. But seven years is a long enough track record that I’m confident there’s something to this approach.

Join The Experiment

I’m hoping both this term “immune hygiene” and this routine catch on. I’d love you guys–my Substack community–to be part of the next phase of this experiment. Try the routine for the rest of winter.

See what happens. I’ll be checking in regularly in the Substack group chat to hear how it’s going for everyone. Share your experience, ask me (and each other) questions, share any ideas for how to improve this routine. In the spring, we’ll see how successful everyone was!