23 : Bees - Something Borrowed

Doing my bit for the Bees

The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. 

But the bee... gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden 

and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.

Leonardo da Vinci

With Spring only a matter of a few days away in the Southern Hemisphere, I feel as if I am doing my bit for the bees. The blossoms in our garden are blooming, welcoming swarms of bees collecting their pollen. We have spent the past few days preparing our garden for Spring; trimming back old growth making way for new.  Planting new flowers, including flowering ground covers, punnets, bulbs and flowering shrubs.

I'm reminded when hearing the buzzing of bees how important they are for us all. Bees are responsible for pollinating approximately 70 of the 100 crop species that feed 90% of the world population. It doesn't stop there, if we lose the plants that bees pollinate we also lose the animals that feed on those plants and interrupt the well oiled food chain; which would be catastrophic for the world as we know it. 

bbc.com-what-if-bees-went-extinct