Feeding Cards Save Tired Bees

Bright Ideas: Feeding Cards Save Tired Bees

Have you ever been walking down the street and seen a bee struggling on the pavement? Often, they look slow, flightless, and disoriented. This is because bees are the world’s hardest workers, and sometimes they just run out of steam travelling from one flower to the next. It happens to the best of us just going about our daily activities (which are often less strenuous than the daily to-do list of a honey bee). My kids reach down and help a little exhausted bee in distress; it’s one of the sights I love to see most.

And it seems that my family are not the only bee-saviours out there! In fact, a wonderful human named Dan Harris from the UK recently developed an interesting solution, or first-aid kit, for the world’s exhausted urban bee. Harris developed what he calls “Bee Saviour” cards: credit card sized paper cards that have three tiny wells or sachets containing sugar solution for feeding and reviving our struggling friends. The tiny sachets can be placed besides the distressed animal so they can drink, revive, and survive! Ingenious and super sweet, in more ways than one!

There is something so beautiful and sensitive in Harris’ idea. For the bee, it can save their life; obviously an important aspect. But on an educational level, it might be a small but perfect way for people to reconnect with nature and take the time to help something way smaller than themselves in its huge contribution to the world we live in. As Harris described recently in an article in The Guardian, “It struck me that everyone who walks around a city will have walked past an exhausted bee. That means you’ve also walked past an opportunity to connect with nature.” For me, this seems like the truly winning aspect of this wonderful project.

It’s not always easy to see exactly where to begin in helping to save the planet. For me, the bees have always been this incredible cornerstone: by loving bees we learn so much about the broader ecosystem, about the health of the planet, simultaneously raising human awareness of very dire and important environmental issues. It’s as if the most vital life lessons stem from this creature.

So, even though it might seem like a small deal to save one struggling bee in the street, it trickles into something much larger. Harris described the amazing feeling of watching the bee shimmy up onto the card and closer to food, and how watching it drink away, rejuvenating itself, was a very rewarding moment for himself, but more importantly those people who are new to the wonders of bees. Harris has now set up the not-for-profit, Bee Saviour Behaviour, and is currently crowdfunding his feeding card project. Heart-warming and clever to say the least! https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/take-savethebees-to-the-streets