Picture this: You’ve finished all your classes for the day, and you’re fast-walking to the nearest café before the lunchtime rush. You hastily order a large coffee, a whole-wheat croissant, and an arugula salad, which you only know about since you’re some kind of pseudo-vegetarian now, and snag a table outside. You can finally relax when you settle under the shadow of the umbrella, on the first bearable day of this endless summer.

The sunlight’s shimmering through the trees, the breeze plays across your face, and…

A goddamn bee lands on your coffee.

After that little jump you do when you’re startled by this buzzing fiend (especially if you’re allergic), you try to gently swat it away. You also try to accomplish this without launching your hard-earned coffee, paid for with your parents’ money, onto one of your professors sitting nearby, whom you’ve been studiously ignoring.

“I drop-kicked a bee once,” you warn the tiny intruder under your breath. It’s true. Happened during a high school band trip to Busch Gardens, and you’ve never forgotten that glorious moment. Evidently, this bee hasn’t forgotten, either; he leaves you in peace, but then he (or an associate) decides to return a minute later. What is it about you that the bee finds so enticing?

Alas, this is not "Bee Movie." This bee is actually braving the terror of a giant human so he can get a sip of that sweet coffee. Studies show that bees love caffeine; they obsessively check caffeinated flowers, and although it increases their speed and betters their memory, it makes them worse at foraging. I can relate.

Most people have a natural fear of bees they probably developed in early childhood, but bees really don’t want to sting you all that much – they’re vegetarians anyway (except for wasps, who actually do some pollinating too, but are also the spawn of Satan). Many species of bees even have barbed stingers, which means that as the bee takes off after embedding its stinger in its target, part of the poor buzzer’s abdomen is ripped out as well. It’s also important to note that only half the population (lady bees) possess stingers in the first place.

Less relatable, but just as cool: bees generate their own electric field, which allows them to harvest food magnetically (their wings produce a strong negative charge, attracting the positively-charged pollen); they communicate with their siblings through a complex dance-based sign language; they have the most densely packed gray matter of any animal, allowing them to count to four(!) and possess different personalities and emotions; the honey they produce never goes bad, has remarkable antibacterial properties, and also tastes really good if you happen to run out of Splenda. And lastly, to quote Bee Movie, “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.”

Unfortunately, something’s been killing these passionate little workers lately, and at enormous rates (hint: it's us).

In 2013, 37 million bees died in Canada alone, and scientific studies have speculated that neonicotinoids, a widely-used insecticide, is at fault. There’s also this little thing called climate change that’s been stripping the bees of almost 200 miles off the southern end of their “wild range”. For some reason, though, they aren’t moving northward like many other plant and animal species, just clustering closer together. That means more bees per square mile; not desirable for either party.

Now, we’ve all seen the "Bee Movie," and if for some ungodly reason you haven’t, spoilers: we need bees. They’re the main pollinators of a lot of our crops, which is really important if you’re interested in eating.

President Obama, bless him, has been doing the best he can: in the spring of 2015, he unveiled the first national strategy for improving the longevity of pollinators, in which the Department of Agriculture offered $8 million in incentives to farmers in five states who offer to make new habitats for honeybees.

But, as we very well know, there’s only so much that Congress will allow a President to accomplish, and a coalition of bees can't very well wear their little bee suits to a courtroom and sue the National Honey Board. Luckily, there’s plenty of easy, non-time-consuming things you can do throughout your week to help bees, such as:

• Don’t pick your garden clean of weeds, and stay away from using chemicals on the soil. It's kind of like how you should be treating your hair.
• Plant bee-friendly flowers in said garden: lilacs, lavender, mint, tomatoes, pumpkins, sunflowers, honeysuckle, and toadflax all qualify, as well as many, many more.
• Make a habit of buying raw honey from local farmers markets or beekeepers. Don't know how to find them? Here. Now you have no excuse.
• Put out a small bowl of water near your garden like you would for a dog, only smaller – bees get thirsty too!
• If a bee lands on you, it’s because you’re in the way of some sweet nectar. Bees really only care about their job, which is getting the nectar. Yes, they can smell fear (pheromones), which may prompt them to sting you out of their own fear. So be chill.

After a time, you realize that the bees are just trying their best. They're tired, too. You dip your index finger into your now-cold coffee and smear it around the rim of the cup. Don’t worry, Mr. Bee – drink’s on me.