Abby Gordon's Honey Bee Project
Posted
on Aug 12, 2014
Our Program on August 12th was a presentation by Abby Gordon, a senior at Minnetonka High School, and she talked about her honey bee project, and the fate of the honeybee. She had spoken to us before, and received a grant from our club to start a hive at Camp Tanadoona. The hive has become the center of a series of talks about bees and hives for the young campers, who have become knowledgeable about the subject.
Abby’s goals in her project are to educate people about bees, their habits and habitats so that people will know how important bees are to our everyday style of life. She says that the current reduction in the number of bees, if it continues, will result in the bees dying out completely in 2035. With no bees, pollination of plants will be seriously curtailed, and food supplies will be endangered. Currently, according to Abby, China is reduced to having people pollinate their plants by hand.
Another goal of Abby’s group is to provide healthier hives and habitats for the existing bees, so they will prosper and reverse the present trends. One of the issues is the use of pesticides; the City of Shorewood recently outlawed pesticides that are unfriendly and damaging to honey bees, and the hope is that all of the other cities will follow suit.
Her third goal is to support the work of the U of Minnesota Bee Lab by helping to raise funds to further their research.