Erin Rupp donned pipe-cleaner antennae and stood outside the Home Depot in northeast Minneapolis on Wednesday to make a point about helping bees survive.

“If you’re a homeowner and you want to plant more bee forage — which is one of the major ways to help bees — right now you don’t have many choices,” Rupp said. Many plants and shrubs available to consumers, she said, have been “pre-treated with a systemic pesticide that kills bees.”

Rupp, co-founder of Beez Kneez, a Minneapolis-based honey delivery and bee education business, was one of about 30 adults and children handing out cookies and handmade valentines Wednesday to protest Home Depot’s sale of neonicotinoids, a group of pesticides, and plants treated with them. READ MORE

Published in the Star Tribune Feb. 12, 2014