As we end our Thanksgiving week, we've shared thankfulness with our teachers, co-workers, family, friends, loved ones, and for turkeys, but have you ever thought about thanking a bee? After all, they are responsible for pollinating 30% of our food! Check out this video by enviromentamerica.org.
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Hello Beegether Members!
Recently, I got an email requesting a topic! Thank you for proving your interest and here is the question, "How do bees communicate with each other? Honeybees are capable of an advanced communication system, using their body parts. Once you think about it, it is almost like sign language, when they move their abdomen or flap their wings a certain way, they can signal a swarm of bees to follow them, or if they signal where a good batch of pollen is. A worker bee would signal the other bees by doing a ‘waggle dance’, steps and positions that resemble a figure eight. The duration of her dance represents the longetivity it will take to travel there. The female bee’s dance looks like this, remember worker bees are always female! : 1. The bee prances along in a straight line, waggling her abdomen back and forth, the direction is indicated by the angle of the abdomen posed. The deviation away from the sun indicates the angle away from the sun. 2. She will repeat this waggle dance again, and again…and again! The longer she dances, the further away the source is. 3. During the dance, workers watch intently at the bee GPS and set off! How exciting! Who knew bees could communicate, giving direction, or even vote? Thank you for requesting the topic and keep the requests coming. Now for your action… Now you are a little wiser about bee communication, I want to share an easy action for this week. It's easy because I did most of the work. You can write a letter to your HOA and/or your school district, you choose. Just copy and paste the letter below, change a few things to your liking and email it to your HOA or school district. Dear HOA Board Or State Your School District Here, In December of 2015, The World Health Organization deemed Glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen. Countries in Europe have banned Round Up a weed killer though it is still used in the USA, containing Glyphosate. Nearly immediately after the announcement at the end of last year, Irvine, CA made an important decision to protect their citizens from this toxic chemical. They have been dubbed Non-Toxic Irvine due to their decision to dump RoundUp and move toward organic, non-toxic alternatives. You can read more about how Non-Toxic Irvine got started and how they won over the town to stop using toxic chemicals: http://www.ocweekly.com/news/how-irvine-became-socals-first-non-toxic-city-7317638 I'm writing you today to ask you to do the same, please remove glyphosate from your schedule of herbicides. There are natural alternatives not toxic to our environment, like using a weed wacker, pulling weeds or using vinegar. Please join me to save the bees, our families and communities from toxic chemicals. Sincerely, Your Name Here Last but not least a little extra info for the hive, a huge thank you to our newest BEE HERO Eric Kroneke, new Director of Maintenance and Operations for the Carlsbad Unified School District. Since taking office he has reviewed the plan of action for dealing with weeds and has decided to make a difference in our world by changing to non-toxic alternatives, like vinegar. Thank you Eric for being a bold leader in our community! Also, I have some exciting news. Beegether is going to be featured on yesandyes.org for an interview! Ranging from my experience as a beekeeper to what’s going on with the bees and how you can help. I’ll notify you when you can check it out! Please keep the requests for new topic coming and don’t forget to send your HOA or school district an email asking to remove Round Up from their protocol. I’m also accepting new topics for the November-December newsletter from now until December 3rd. You can email it to me or visit the page here. It’s a wonderful way for you to find out more about the bees. Even if it is not a full topic, we can make sure to highlight it in a newsletter or in a blog post. Thanks for bee-ing together…Beegether, Natasha P.S. Have you taken the pledge? Want to see this in a different format? Visit beegether.weebly.com/blog. Natasha 🐝 Beegether Founder http://beegether.weebly.com/ Let's bee together...Beegether |
Meet the Blogger!Hi there! I'm Natasha. I blog on bees, gardening, making a change, and blogging. I hope you are inspired to make a difference!
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