All About Bees!

by Bethany McFarland AOR
age 14

I would love to tell the folk of the OR how important Bee’s are to Midgard and Mother Jorth and how to protect them for the future.
Our numbers in Bees are declining and if we lose bees entirely it will have devastating effects to Mother Jorth.

We have many different species of Bees and they all do different jobs, but the one they all do that is important is pollinate our flowers, trees and all plants. If our plants are not pollinated then our flowers and trees will start to die and as you know we need these for most of our oxygen. We also need most our plants for food and other animals to survive. It is thought that without bees everything will start to slowly die off between two to five years.

Here are some facts on Bees.
We get delicious honey from Honey Bees and if you eat locally produced honey, then it can help folk who suffer from Hay fever. You can also use Honey to sweeten hot drinks which is better for you than sugar. You can also use it as something to help sooth colds or a sore throat, by mixing it with fresh lemon juice and hot water.

Did you know that before Bees can fly off and do what they do in the morning, they have to warm up! They do this by slowly climbing up to the highest point possible, which is hard if you have not much energy.

Look out for dozy Bees. Sometimes Bess get tired! If you see a Bee on the floor and looks close to dying, you can help by using a cocktail stick and drizzling some honey close by it. The honey contains natural sugar and the Bees will drink it and this enable them to restore the energy they need to fly. Try and carefully move the Bee out of harms way, so that no-one steps on it

In Britain we have a new Bee and its called the Tree Bee. Not much is known about this Bee yet, but we are very lucky and we should help look after this new Bee.

We should all try and plant more flowers in our gardens and those folk who haven’t got a garden can use things like pot plants, window boxes or even hanging baskets! Bees rely on sense of smell, but because of pollution, mainly from cars, they cannot smell the flowers as well. Many people are turning their gardens into car parking spaces, so less flowers are being planted. The best kind of flowers to plant is lavender. Bees love these and can smell them. Not only are the flowers beautiful for us, but Lavender also makes the honey taste nice too, which the bees do naturally for us.

Folk can make a home for the solitary Bees by getting a flower pot and jam packing it with garden bamboo canes. The flower pot can be of any size and so can the bamboo cane, as long as you cut the cane down to the same size as the pot. Tie the pot up and watch…… these solitary Bees don’t make a hive or honey, but it will help them.

These Bees are incredible creatures and really need our help….. so don’t be scarred of them, they will only sting if they fell threatened. Bees only sting once as their stinger rips out from their abdomen and they die.

Wasps:
Did you know that wasp nests are made from the wasps chewing on trees and turning it into paper! If a wasp builds a nest near or in your house, leave it!Once the queen wasp leaves the nest, she will not come back nor will other wasps. Also other wasps will never make another nest any where near the other nests. So its best not to destroy live nests or empty nests. This is much better than using pesticides to kill them, its natural and safer.

There is a bird of prey called “The Honey Buzzard”, but it does not eat honey, they eat wasp grubs, which are baby wasps, another natural way of getting rid of wasps.
Honey Buzzards are very rare and are an endangered speciaes.