When people think of honey and bumble bees, they often think of the stinging sensation that comes along with them, and the importance of honey bees is one that often slips our minds. Honey bees are an extremely important and as they are dying off, our food sources are in danger too. A lot of the problem comes with the pesticide neonicotinoids, which kill bees by damaging their nervous systems, weakening memories and stopping their ability to fly or forage. This pesticide is used on more than 140 different crops, and if the honey bees go extinct, we are all in trouble.
With this happening, the company Burt’s Bees is dropping the B’s from their name to help promote the cause of the honey bees. Burt’s Bees are pledging to plant 1,000 wildflowers in your honor when you drop the letter b from your tweets and use the hashtag BringBackTheBees or buy any limited edition lip balm. It’s a very easy cause to help, and the company is hoping to plant 1 billion wildflowers.
The way I look at this is that this is a very good and easy way to help the bee populations. Another problem is that the pesticide is not regulated or controlled. Many people don’t realize that if we lose the honey bees, our grocery stores will change drastically and a lot of produce would be depleted. The bees pollinate almost a third of our crops, so the neonicotinoids that are linked with killing our pollinators is a huge problem. So many people will be out of jobs, and beekeepers are already losing so many of their bees. As of now the U.K. and Canada have started to phase out neonicotinoids, while the EPA in the U.S. has yet to do much about the problem.
Imagine a world without honey bees: there would be no honey, apples, milk or coffee. For many college students, they should really care about this. I know personally there would be days were I could not function without a cup of coffee, or highly caffeinated tea (to which you add honey for a natural sweetener). Coffee is a huge part of most peoples’ lives, and companies such as Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Tim Horton’s could suffer greatly.
Burt’s Bees decided to plant wildflowers because they will provide safe and clean pollen for the bees. With clean pollen, the bees will be heathy enough to repopulate and pollinate crops. Hopefully the EPA and government will see how this can be beneficial and put regulations on neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are not the way of the future, they’re killing the bees that we so desperately rely on without even realizing it.
This is an amazing way to help the bees, so do your part and bee helpful by participating in the campaign set up by Burt’s Bees. You can even plant wildflowers, sunflowers, lavender or a butterfly bush in your own yard or flower garden to help our very buzzy friends the bees. #BringBackTheBees
