Save the Bees!

(Sorry if this post sounds like a random advertisement and really has nothing to do with my life, but I am making a post about bees because I feel like I need to make a post about bees. Thank you.)



A bumblebee in the garden next door

Attention, people of the world! The bees need YOUR help.

Our fuzzy, buzzy, bumbly garden friends are currently in trouble. Their population is decreasing for a variety of reasons, including pesticides, parasites, malnutrition and other stuff that you can read about by clicking the link above.

But if you don't really have time to read an article, then you can skip straight to the rest of this post. And noooo, I am not the world's greatest expert on bees, but I know enough to make a post about it. So, read on:

 

WHY SHOULD PEOPLE HELP THE BEES?

Well, there are several reasons. They include:

• If there were no bees, then us humans would have practically no food at all. They pollinate a LOT of the stuff we eat, and that we feed to our livestock.
• Without bees, there would be no honey! :(
• And not many flowers.
• Bees are fluffy, adorable, innocent creatures that deserve to live!
• They are also really photogenic. :)
• Their population is seriously less than half of what it was back in the 40's, and if it keeps decreasing this rapidly our bees will not be doing well at all in the future.

 

WAYS YOU CAN HELP THE BEES:

• Don't buy foods that have been farmed with pesticides, because pesticides are bad and they hurt bees and if you support farms that use pesticides then they will keep using them and the bees will keep being hurt.
• PLANT FLOWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Seriously, go do it. Buy a flower and plant it in your garden right now. Please.
• If you see swarms of bees in your yard, that is GOOD! It means that you are doing a great job of helping the bees by planting things they like! Do NOT try to knock down their hives or kill them off!

(Thank you to my grandma Pat, or greengreengreen on Blogger, for giving me this information.)

 

Also, don't be afraid of bees. Not all people, but quite a lot of people in my experience, think of bees as evil things that want to sting any human that comes within a foot of them. (Ahem, Nora.) But bees really aren't as interested in stinging as you might imagine. Seriously, I know that, because there have been times when I have chased bees around for 10 minutes straight shoving a camera into their faces (as you can tell from the picture above--I didn't use zoom) and they just carried on with their merry bee lives without even thinking once of stinging me. They really only sting you as a last resort, like if you're a crazy little child who is stepping on them or touching them or trying to eat them for some weird reason. Please, make sure your child does not run around trying to eat bees or I will seriously start to wonder about your parenting skills.

 

Here are some special flowers bees really like:

 

Alyssum

Anise hyssop

Annual poppies

Asters

Bee balm

Black-eyed Susans

Butterfly weed

Clover

Coneflower

Cranesbill

 

So, I guess that's about all I have to say on the topic of helping the bees. So please, do your best to help them, and share this information with people you know!

Byeeeee!

Thanks for tuning into this bee PSA. The bees appreciate it.