Photos submitted to Times Observer In the Youngsville High School Technology Design & Systems class, students were given an assignment that deals with the ongoing bee population facing our world. A portion of this assignment was to research, design and build bee hives. These bee hives will be donated to Wildwoods Animal Park in Clarendon. Students with bee hive, from left, are James Sorber, Jake Williams, Dean Procter, Owen Procter, Josh Frazier, Richard Baine, Brandin Wolcott.

By Youngsville High School

junior Josh Frazier

The bee’s population over the last few years has dropped exponentially from its normal number. This could be anywhere from 30% to 90% in some areas. With the bees dying off, they do not transport the required amount of pollen to the flowers, killing off some of the plants and crops. Also, with the honeybee population rapidly decreasing, most apiarists, more commonly known as bee keepers, are losing time, money, and their precious bees.

The honey bee population is declining at an alarming rate, but why? Scientists believe the most probable cause is the amount of pesticides and insecticides we use every day. What we put on our garden and flower bed to repel most pests is harming the bee population. The commonly known name for bee colonies and the hives dying off is known as CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder. This happens when bees come back from gathering and spreading the pollen; they pick up chemicals from the plants sprayed with them and bring back the harmful chemicals to their hive which in turn infects all the bees.

For the Bio-Technology portion of our Technology Design & Systems Course we are researching, designing, and fabricating beehives. These beehives will be donated to Wild Woods Animal Park in Clarendon, Pennsylvania.

The beehive our class is making is made out of many stackable boxes that house man made combs the bees produce honey in. Each box holds roughly 10 slabs of wood laid horizontally with the man made honey combs. In inches the slabs of wood are 19×9.5×1.5 and the box is 20×16 1/4×9 5/8. Each beehive is stacked on a tray with is a little piece of wood for being able to stack the hives easily and efficiently.

Why should anyone actually care about the bees? Most people believe bees to be a burden stinging people and BEEing an overall nuisance; however this is so far from the truth. The pollen a bee carries from plant to plant and crop to crop is vital for our planets ecosystem. Without it, many plants and crops would die. Some parts of the world including China and Arabia have to practice hand pollination, which by what I have read sound like the worst thing imaginable. But for the sake of it, let’s try; let’s say you and 9 other individuals have been giving the task of pollinating a whole field of flowers. Instead of spraying pollen everywhere you can’t, because doing it like that makes it so it doesn’t stick. So you and your coworkers must individually use a brush and pollenate every single flower in the field. It would take you days, but if we have the bees, we’ll never have to find out how some parts of the world already feel.

Citations: http://sos-bees.org/ Accessed on April 12, 2017; Haqopian, Joachim, Death and Extinction of Bees, http://www.globalresearch.ca/death-and-extinction-of-the-bees/5375684. Global Research. March 24, 2017. Accessed on April 12, 2017.