I’ll not fill in the survey in that case. Just put me down as a “no”.
Wild bees in my garden don’t have or need “stuff” from shops.
There’s an untouched area of garden where they can make homes by digging holes in the grass and/or the soil (bumblebees), rolling up bits of leaf and then bunging them in holes in the fence (leafcutter bees), and scraping out bits of old rotting mortar in the garden wall (masonry bees).
They do just fine without any help from me, B and Q, or whatever, and have done for millennia.
Sorry if this sounds rude. It’s not meant to be rude. I just think that if human beings did less trying to “help” nature and just left it alone, to do what it has done perfectly well for millions of years, a whole lot more, the planet would be a better place.
But that said, good luck with your studies.😊
Apophthegm - a big word for a small thought. If you live in Derbyshire, as I do.
Hello again, I have a question about your course and its aim(s).
Are your teachers interested in you turning out a design for the ideal “bee conservation house” that will help maintain bee numbers, or are they interested in you learning about ecology in general or do they want to see how good you are at statistics or doing surveys, or maybe all of the above?
Do you get points for blindly following instructions from your teacher or for displaying a degree of independent thinking?
Here is my real point:
If the aim is to preserve the bee by helping it to find a home, could I borrow Greta Thunberg for a couple of minutes here?
Let’s consider your picture that explained to me what a bee conservation house is. Lets look at its constituent parts and how they came together.
First, there is timber, possibly plywood. Where does timber come from? Trees that have been deliberately grown for timber. What was there before the arrival of the timber plantation? Possibly a natural forest that was felled because it was commercially useless. Maybe the forest was full of bees. Maybe it used to be a wildflower meadow that got dug up and turned into a timber plantation. Again, maybe it used to be full of bees.
The timber grows over maybe 20 bee-less years and is then logged and sent by road, using diesel lorries, to a factory where is sliced and planed into planks. Plywood is created using glues, themselves made probably from byproducts of the oil industry. For the effects of the oil industry on the Russian tundra, the Alaskan forests and the Nigerian countryside you can google pictures.
That’s just the plywood.
Now look at the little metal grille. Galvanised aluminium or steel. Zinc had to be extracted from the ground and processed to create the galvanised finish. Steel and aluminium are made from ores in the earth. None of these three metals can be extracted from the ground and leave it undamaged. And then there is the process of making the finished metal. Take a look at a bauxite mine and an aluminium works. Not a bee to be seen, although before the mines and the factories arrived of course it was a different matter.
The bamboo. I don’t imagine that some picturesque Chinese peasant is going for a little walk up a mountain to ask a panda if he could take some of his habitat away in order to turn it into a bee conservation house. The bamboo will have been planted in the same way that the timber was planted. And processed using diesel and factories.
And then the paint. See the oil industry, above.
Where did the stuff for the rope come from? No idea what the rope is made of, possibly cotton to be “eco friendly”. Take a quick look at what cotton growing has done to the Aral Sea. Never mind save the bee, how about saving the fish?
You see, we all say that we want to help the bee. How much more we could all help the bee (and many many other living organisms) if we just left the planet alone and stopped feeling the need to buy “stuff” to help it when the best way to help it is to not wreck the planet by buying things to help it......
Apophthegm - a big word for a small thought. If you live in Derbyshire, as I do.
I can see the survey now but most of it is not applicable for me because I see no need to buy (or even make) a fancy bee house. @pansyface makes some very good points. I think best way to encourage bees (and wildlife more generally) is to grow lots of things that they like and not to be fanatical about having a tidy garden. I regularly see several different types of bee in my garden so I expect the bumbles have been nesting in the untidy corners under the shrubs or hedge. Some years I get the mining bees that make little cones of soil with a hole in the top (I haven't seen those this year but I might not have looked in the right place) and I even had a visiting swarm of honeybees for a day or so earlier in the year. If I wanted to make a "bee house" with minimal environmental impact I think I would just cut some old canes that have got too brittle for plant supports into short lengths, tie them together with a few bits of old string and stuff it in the hedge or in a corner somewhere. Bees don't care about design, but then they don't need to get GCSEs either . Sorry I can't help, and good luck with your studies.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
I'm with pansyface on this. Apart from all the points about using recources to construct something that may or may not be useful, there is the problem of disease. An artificial bee habitat could be a great way to spread disease from bee to bee unless the bamboo etc. was changed on a yearly basis. Much as a bird box needs to be disinfected at the end of each season, I would assume that the same sort of regime would be needed for a bee hotel. Far better to ensure that bees and other insects have access to natural habitats.
Perhaps you should look at the next most popular choice? You have a lot of evidence here which you could use to support leaving bees to their own devices. It would also show a sympathetic attitude towards the bees. I imagine that you have to make a product. It might involve more skills to make something to provide shelter for something bigger - where did hedgehogs figure? Good luck with your DT project. I'm a retired DT teacher so have been through the process many times!
I few months ago I asked for you all to be so kind as to fill out a survey for me regarding wildlife and nature in the countryside, more specifically bees. Fast forward 6 months and my project is complete. Now, I would like to ask for your feedback (strengths, weaknesses, general comments etc.) on my final bee hotel product? It would be much appreciated and I will include the feedback in my coursework portfolio!
What do you mean by "countryside", the middle of no-where? I live in a village, opposite the South Downs, 2 roads away are farms, yet we are considered suburbs, not rural. Not enough questions for each section
Posts
I’ll not fill in the survey in that case. Just put me down as a “no”.
Wild bees in my garden don’t have or need “stuff” from shops.
There’s an untouched area of garden where they can make homes by digging holes in the grass and/or the soil (bumblebees), rolling up bits of leaf and then bunging them in holes in the fence (leafcutter bees), and scraping out bits of old rotting mortar in the garden wall (masonry bees).
They do just fine without any help from me, B and Q, or whatever, and have done for millennia.
Sorry if this sounds rude. It’s not meant to be rude. I just think that if human beings did less trying to “help” nature and just left it alone, to do what it has done perfectly well for millions of years, a whole lot more, the planet would be a better place.
But that said, good luck with your studies.😊
If you live in Derbyshire, as I do.
Are your teachers interested in you turning out a design for the ideal “bee conservation house” that will help maintain bee numbers, or are they interested in you learning about ecology in general or do they want to see how good you are at statistics or doing surveys, or maybe all of the above?
Do you get points for blindly following instructions from your teacher or for displaying a degree of independent thinking?
Here is my real point:
If the aim is to preserve the bee by helping it to find a home, could I borrow Greta Thunberg for a couple of minutes here?
Let’s consider your picture that explained to me what a bee conservation house is. Lets look at its constituent parts and how they came together.
First, there is timber, possibly plywood. Where does timber come from? Trees that have been deliberately grown for timber. What was there before the arrival of the timber plantation? Possibly a natural forest that was felled because it was commercially useless. Maybe the forest was full of bees. Maybe it used to be a wildflower meadow that got dug up and turned into a timber plantation. Again, maybe it used to be full of bees.
The timber grows over maybe 20 bee-less years and is then logged and sent by road, using diesel lorries, to a factory where is sliced and planed into planks. Plywood is created using glues, themselves made probably from byproducts of the oil industry. For the effects of the oil industry on the Russian tundra, the Alaskan forests and the Nigerian countryside you can google pictures.
That’s just the plywood.
Now look at the little metal grille. Galvanised aluminium or steel. Zinc had to be extracted from the ground and processed to create the galvanised finish. Steel and aluminium are made from ores in the earth. None of these three metals can be extracted from the ground and leave it undamaged. And then there is the process of making the finished metal. Take a look at a bauxite mine and an aluminium works. Not a bee to be seen, although before the mines and the factories arrived of course it was a different matter.
The bamboo. I don’t imagine that some picturesque Chinese peasant is going for a little walk up a mountain to ask a panda if he could take some of his habitat away in order to turn it into a bee conservation house. The bamboo will have been planted in the same way that the timber was planted. And processed using diesel and factories.
And then the paint. See the oil industry, above.
Where did the stuff for the rope come from? No idea what the rope is made of, possibly cotton to be “eco friendly”. Take a quick look at what cotton growing has done to the Aral Sea. Never mind save the bee, how about saving the fish?
You see, we all say that we want to help the bee. How much more we could all help the bee (and many many other living organisms) if we just left the planet alone and stopped feeling the need to buy “stuff” to help it when the best way to help it is to not wreck the planet by buying things to help it......
If you live in Derbyshire, as I do.
I few months ago I asked for you all to be so kind as to fill out a survey for me regarding wildlife and nature in the countryside, more specifically bees. Fast forward 6 months and my project is complete. Now, I would like to ask for your feedback (strengths, weaknesses, general comments etc.) on my final bee hotel product? It would be much appreciated and I will include the feedback in my coursework portfolio!
Thank you for your time,
Selena x