After students at Garden City elementary learned that bee hives at Paulik Park were vandalized, they decided to write the perpetrator(s) to tell them how they felt and explain the importance of honey bees.
Here is just a sample of the 20 letters their teacher, Ms. Sakai, shared with the Richmond News.
Dear Bee Vandals,
I was very sad when I heard the bee boxes were knocked over. Our class goes to Paulik Park to learn about nature. It takes two million flowers to make one pound of honey.
It requires 556 worker bees to gather one pound of honey. Every third mouthful of food is produced by bees pollinating crops.
Flowering plants rely on bees for pollination so that they can produce fruit and seeds.
Without bees pollinating these plants, there would not be very many fruits or vegetables to eat.
Bees go through four stages of development egg, larvae, pupae and adult bee.
I hope you don’t kick the bee box again.
Hansen
Dear Bee Vandals,
I felt as mad as fireworks when I heard the bee boxes were knocked over. Our class visits Paulik Park once a month and we enjoy seeing the nature.
Bees are wonderful because worker bees gather both polin and nectar from flowers to feed the larvae and other members of the colony.
Bees are important because they use two million flowers to make one pound of honey...Bees are remarkable because their wings beat 200 times per second.
Bees are useful because bees are the only insect in the world that makes food that humans can eat. I hope you learned your lesson to not hurt the bees.
Michelle
Other interesting facts shared by the students:
A honey bee can fly 24 km/hour. A single hive can make more than 100 pounds of extra honey.
Markus
Did you know bees can see all colours, except the colour red? Even if they are called “killer bees’ their venom is no more dangerous than regular honey bees. I hope you leave the bees alone.
Gianna
Honey was found in tombs in Egypt and was still edible! The queen bee will lay around 1,500 eggs per day. People have discovered the anti-bacterial properties of propolis for use in the medical field.
Katie
