Morgan Freeman turns his 124-acre ranch into bee sanctuary

 The actor wants to help the environment [Photo: Courtesy]

 

Many Hollywood movie stars often like to have a hobby to escape to when they're not acting, and for Morgan Freeman, that's his bees.

The 81-year-old first began his foray into beekeeping back in 2014 and has since converted his 124-acre ranch into a giant bee sanctuary.

Keen to make a concerted effort to save honeybees, which have been dwindling at an alarming rate over the past 50 years, Morgan imported the hives from Arkansas to his Mississippi property.

The actor explained how he even went without a bee suit to feed the insects a diet of sugar and water and had never been stung.

 Morgan Freeman on his Mississippi ranch [Photo: Courtesy]

Speaking in an interview on The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon just a couple of weeks after beginning his new hobby, the legendary star explained how he wanted to make a difference and help save the environment.

"There is a concerted effort for bringing bees back onto the planet," the actor said during the chat show back in 2014.

"We do not realize that they are the foundation, I think, of the growth of the planet, the vegetation…I have a lot of flowering things, and I have a gardener too.

"As she takes care of the bees too, all she does is figure out, ‘OK, what would they like to have?’, so we have got acres and acres of clover, and we have some planting stuff like lavender, I have got like, maybe 140 magnolia trees, big blossoms."

He imported 26 bee hives from Arkansas and said he only intends to feed the bees and doesn't want to harvest them for honey.

Freeman isn't the only famous beekeeper in Hollywood as it was reported Scarlett Johansson took up the hobby after her co-star Samuel L. Jackson gave her a beehive as a wedding present.

It's thought she used the honey harvested from the bees, who she co-parented with her then-husband Ryan Reynolds, in her skincare regime.