World Bee Day is celebrated on the 20th May, a day to recognise the importance of preserving honey bees and other pollinators throughout the world.
To many people bees are fuzzy little insects buzzing around the flowers during the summer months but actually they have an extremely important role within our eco-system. Bees are the pollinators of our world, without them our crops wouldn't be able to grow and habitats for other insects and animals would slowly die away. Almost 90% of wild plants and 75% of leading crops rely on pollination which puts into perspective how important these little creatures are.
1. The honey bee lives in a hive with its member being divided into three types:
Queen - A bee hive only has one queen and it is her job to run the hive and produce the hives next generation of bees.
Workers - These are female bees that live in the hive. Their job is to forage for food (pollen and nectar), build and protect the hive and circulate air around the hive by beating their wings. These are the only bees that you will see outside of the hive.
Drones - These are male bees that live in the hive. Their job is to mate with the Queen. During summer there can be hundreds of drones within a hive, but come winter when the hive goes into survival mode the drones are evicted.
2. Bees produce honey from the pollen and nectar that they collect which acts as food stores for the hive for during the winter months. In a good season a hive can produce up to 60lb of honey.
3. Bees can fly at around 25km per hour and beat their wings around 200 times per second.
Bees are under threat from a range of things; the use of pesticides, habitat loss and climate change all being contributing factors. As a society we must all do our bit to help the bees and ensure that our eco-systems remain healthy. So this World Bee Day why not plant a bee friendly tree, plant some flowers, make a bug hotel in your garden for the bees to take a rest or dress the children in this Teevolution kids Bee hoodie
Sources:
https://www.worldbeeday.org/en
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Alex /
Great by all means and a very informative blog. I’ve learned something new today, keep sharing worthy info like this!
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