Airthlings For Change: Lent Blog : Into the Final Week

It's the Final Week!!!!!

M'on the bees (and the Butterflies too!)

Hello Everyone, we're into the final week of lent now and we've been trying to keep the blog up to date but there has been a lot going on! Tonight we'd like to talk to you a little bit more about bees (and other insects too) because they are really important to the planet. I say we - but really my sister Erin would hardly let me get a word in but she loves bees very much, so I'll let her off!

Basically, I was going to say that we already talked a little about the danger caused to the planet by pesticides when we were doing our blog about factory farming and organic food. It is really important that the big companies growing our food stop using so many harmful chemicals that are killing our soil and our insects but tonight we want to talk about some of the things we can do to help too.

As Erin was saying - wildflowers are a really important part of the environment and you shouldn't really pick them when you are out and about. If everyone did that, there would be done left and that's not helping bees and other wildlife who depend on them. We depend on bees to help our food and flowers grow, without them, our planet simply wouldn't be able to survive.

There are things we can do to help, like planting flowers which will attract bees (we like lavender!) but also by leaving parts of your garden alone to let wildflowers grow. in the last few years we have pretty much stopped weeding and only cut the grass very occasionally because there are lots of pretty flowers that grow in the grass which the bees like to visit. Maybe you could cut the grass less or even just leave an area where flowers can grow. Lots of small things do help.

If you are going to get rid of weeds, we would really like to ask you to consider not using weedkiller because there is lots of evidence that it is really harmful to bees and some scientist also think that certain weedkillers are very harmful to humans too.

Erin loves to talk about petitions, so maybe you could sign a petition or write to your local council to ask them not to spray weedkiller and also perhaps not to cut the grass so much. It will save money too and to be honest we don't understand why they want to spend money on that instead of things like Libraries (we are still pretty mad about our council removing the library bus!)

Anyway, we just wanted to give you some ideas about how to help bees because they really are important in making the world, not just a better place, but a place we can live in at all.