Allison Mitchell

Get curious essay

UWRT 1104
Bees! Bees! Bees!
You may be reading the title of this and wondering, why is this girl writing about
bees! They are awful and only cause me pain! Whelp, you my friend are wrong. This
here paper will fill your mind with wonderful information about bees and how they impact
each and every one of your lives. When Barbara told us to write a paper about
something that interested us and the first thing that
came to mind was something I heard from some
friend a couple days before. They told me that
honeybees were going extinct. I told him, Why is
that a big deal, they're just bees? I got the funniest
look and was told to go home and look it up. Which
lead to where we are right now. I am officially
obsessed with the bees. There are about 20,000
types of bees in the world. These bees all have their own roles in life but I believe the
most important one is the honeybee! There are so many bees but these are the only
ones that would truly impact us if they were to disappear.
Honey Bees
Health Benefits
I dont know about anyone else but when spring comes around I end up
looking like a puffy eyed, sneezy, stuffed up, drowsy mess. About two years later

when I was at a smoothie shop called The Juice Shop the girl working saw how
miserable I looked and asked me if I had ever tried bee pollen in my smoothie. I
was a little taken by her suggestion but I decided to give it a chance. It turns out
that if you consume local pollen and or honey it helps your allergies immensely. I
found on a website named Healthline that, overtime, a person may become lesssensitive to this pollen.
Another health benefit to honey could shock you. Honey has been said to
help slow down the growth of cancerous tumors. There's a lot of big words about
the things in honey so I can just tell
you that Health Impact News states
that, the presence of flavonoids and
phenolic acids in honey as the
primary anti-cancer compounds
involved in its beneficial properties.
Basically if you eat honey while
going through cancer treatments it is
said to help slow down tumor growth.
The only thing about this is that it has not been scientifically proven yet.

What they do
Honeybees play a crucial role in our life that most people dont even know
about! They pollinate the food and plants. This is so important because without
bees the plants would have no way of reproducing. When a honeybee lands on a

flower it picks up pollen in the little hairs on its body and then when it lands on its
next plant the pollen rubs off and stays on that plant. This allows a plant to fully
develop.
Bee Keepers
Beekeepers play a very important role in the bee community. Beekeepers
create little homes for the bees. While I have done a ton of research on what
beekeepers do I think my best source is an old man named Wally. My dad had
purchased a piece of land that has a really old house on it, its pretty much a little cabin!
He noticed a buzzing in the wall and eventually figured out that there was a hive that
had been growing for years on the inside of the walls. Wally, who has been a beekeeper
for many years, came with his son and grandson to remove the nest. They brought all
the proper tools they had the jackets that zip with the hood so no bees get in, a smoker,
and they had a little shovel thing to get the bees into their boxes. Wally walked us
through step by step on how the removal process worked and how he keeps his bees at
his house. You keep them in boxes that are off the ground. To keep the bees calm while
you work in their boxes you use a smoker. I read on Beekeeping 101s website that the
smoke interferes with their chemical messages and so the bees are calmer because
they arent communicating on what to do. As a beekeeper you collect the honey from
the hives to keep or even to sell. My favorite part of Wally coming to handle the bees
was when his grandson was stung in the butt crack. Beekeeping doesnt just have to be
for people who live on a place like a farm, anyone can do it! Unless you live in an
apartment or something. You just have to have a good amount of space to keep a hive

and you have to check with your neighbors and what not to make sure everyone is okay
with having bees around
Whats killing them?
There are multiple reasons why bees are dying off. There are pesticides that hurt
bees and cause them to die when they go to pollinate a plant. This is a big reason why
bees are dying. They have set rules where farmers have to test their soil for worms and
such just so that they can make sure less and less farmers are using these chemicals.
Also the weather can cause big problems for bees as well. When it gets really cold it
can kill the bees. The Weather Channel said that, in 2012, "This winter (we
experienced) the largest die-off of bees ever in the history of the United States."
What happens when theyre gone?
From what I have put together from the research I have put together if bees are to
go extinct, we will lose a lot of crops, which means the food markets wouldn't do as well
because the quality of the food would go down. Not only that but it would also affect the
food chain. If the plants aren't being pollinated, the animals that eat plants won't have as
much food, and whatever eats them and so on and so on. I dont know about you all but
I really enjoy some chicken or a nice juicy steak so I would like to avoid this at all costs.

What can we do?

I went on the Save the Bees website and looked up what we can do to help. The
best things to do is plant a
nectar plant for bees to have
food to eat. We can lighten up

on the amount of pesticides we use. So many bees are killed because of their exposure
to pesticides on plants. You could even become a beekeeper and make homes for
bees! Which would lead to selling honey. People should buy local honey to help support
local beekeepers! I love to buy local honey to put in my green tea!

"Pollination Facts." - American Beekeeping Federation. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2016.
<http://www.abfnet.org/?page=14>.
Ahmed, Sarfraz. "Honey as a Potential Natural Anticancer Agent: A Review of Its

Mechanisms." Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Hindawi Publishing

Corporation, 2013. Web. 06 Nov. 2016.
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Oct. 2016.
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<http://www.healthline.com/health/allergies/honey-remedy#Purpose2>.
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Sept. 2014. Web. 08 Nov. 2016. <https://healthimpactnews.com/2014/honey-a-powerful-anticancer-agent/>.
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<http://www.nationalhoneybeeday.com/whathoneybeesdo.html>.

Museum, Canada Agriculture and Food. "Pollination." The Importance of Bees:. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
<http://www.bees.techno-science.ca/english/bees/pollination/default.php>.
Flottum, ByKim, and ByGriffin Greenberg. "Beekeeping 101: Supplies, Plans and How
To." Popular Mechanics. N.p., 11 Nov. 2015. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/lawn-garden/how-to/g56/diy-backyard-beekeeping47031701/>.
@weatherchannel. "What's Killing the Honey Bees?" The Weather Channel. N.p., 8 Apr.
2013. Web. 13 Nov. 2016. <https://weather.com/science/nature/news/honey-bee-colony-collapse20130408>.