My Very First Blog Post: Bees Are the Best

I have never made a blog post in my life. I love writing and I do a lot of it, but I am so shy about sharing with people. My main issue is that I don't know what to write about because I really don't believe that people care. I'm not being negative... I'm just boring! I'm okay with that because boring is comfortable. It just means that I don't have a lot to say about myself, so I guess that means I'll write about random things that I'm interested in. Maybe I'll keep doing it, maybe not but I guess it's time that I tried.

Okay, bees.

First off, bees are adorable. They're super fluffy like tiny, flying teddy bears. Bees are also so smart. They dance to communicate, like a secret language for telling eachother where to find the coolest flowers. It's called the waggle dance, so that's another point in their favor.

Bees also work really hard (way harder than I would if I were a bee.) Bees are awesome pollinators, which means they help plants make babies (fruits and veggies.) It's like a flower dating service. Without bees a lot of our favorite foods like coffee and strawberries wouldn't exist. Note: my all-time favorite fruit is huckleberries, but I don't have easy access to them because they grow in the wild in the Pacific Northwest (boo huckleberries! Get it together.)

Honey! It's sweet and delicious and it's so pretty to look at. Bees make it by collecting nectar from flowers and bringing it home to their hives to turn it into bee syrup. They basically barf it up which is kind of gross but also weirdly adorable. This isn't technically true because it's made in a separate organ and doesn't come from their stomachs, but it's a LOT more interesting to say that they barf it up. Ew, but also yum! Honey isn't just delicious; it also has antioxidants, which I am 100% willing to admit that I don't understand but it sounds healthy and probably looks good in a blog post. I do know that honey has antibacterial properties, which is why it was used as treatment for wounds in the way-back super old times. I also hear that local (to you) honey can be used to treat allergies, but I have yet to test that for myself. I love buying local honey from beekeepers, I just haven't tried using it as a treatment BUT MAYBE I SHOULD because my allergies have been horrible.
By the way: YAY BEEKEEPERS! We love you!! When I was little I wanted to be a bee keeper SO badly. I used to call myself an apiarist. I caught bees in jars and said nice things to them before I let them out. Then when I was around 12 I developed a horrible allergy to them out of nowhere. Dreams crushed.

Sadly, bees are in danger. Pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change are threatening bee populations everywhere. It really sucks, but are things we can do to help like planting bee-friendly flower gardens and avoiding harmful chemicals. Some great flowers for bees are beebalm, sunflowers, lavender, coneflower and milkweed. Good news... butterflies also LOVE these! We have clover in our yard instead of a lawn and we love it. I have a lot of opinions about lawns but I won't bore you with that specific gripe (yet.) Our clover lawn is a mix of white and red clover and microclover. The little wildflowers love it so there are a ton of violets, and cute little yellow and purple flowers that people seem to dislike because they are "weeds." (I have opinions about "weeds" too. I have a lot of silly little opinions.) Our lawn is so pretty, it smells good, it only needs to be mowed like 2-3 times a year (more like a haircut,) and most importantly the bees adore it. You know that scene in the show Adventure Time with the bees rolling around in the flowers? No? Well it's like that.

So, I guess my point is that bees are basically perfect. The next time you see a bee buzzing by, tell it I said hello.

Thanks for reading my very first blog post!