Bees In Need!

Bees are very useful for many things. They are most known for being helpful. They collect nectar from flowers and turn it into honey. Not only is that helpful to the plant, but it is a food for many animals, such as bears and humans. And the pollen from the plant is used to feed larvae (bee eggs).

Bees can come in all sorts of sizes from the tiny stingless bee who's workers are less than 2 millimeters long to the Megachile pluto, the biggest bee of the leafcutter bee, who's females can be up to 39 millimeters long! The most common bees in the Northern Hemisphere are the Halictidae, or the sweat bees. They are commonly mistaken for wasps or flies.

Bees have a complicated social structure. Bees have different ways to communicate. Honey bees do the “waggle dance talk.” It is used to tell worker bees where food is. The location can be up to 500 ft away! The bee jumps and wiggles on its sisters to get everyone's attention. It then buzzes its wings and wiggles its abdomen vigorously. Here's a video link.

Bees are sadly dying out mostly because of CCD, or Colony Collapse Disorder. No one knows quite what it is, if it's disease, mites, neonicotinoid pesticide, or fungal infections. None of these could be deadly by themselves, but combined bees will die out. We want to be part of the solution, not the problem.

One of my ideas to help them is to make pesticide specifically for certain types of bugs, as not to attract bees. Another idea is that you could plant flowers in your yard. Don't use pesticide to kill weeds or pests in your garden: You could be killing a hive of bees.

 Bees are unique creatures, helping many today. I think that we need bees in this world, and I hope that we can help them thrive. I hope you learned something today. I hope you enjoyed this blog! Stay tuned for more blogs by Erin!