THE VERY EXTRAORDINARY SCIENCE OF BEES

Hello. I am a bee.

I live in a wild meadow.

My meadow is quiet and peaceful, 
there is one daisy.

In the green grass,
she stand tall,
digs her roots into the soil
and wiggles between the worms.

She fights gravity to drink water, 
up the stem elevator,
from roots to leaves to petals.

In the summer, 
I eat nectar from the flowers.

What we don’t eat,
we chew and spit and store in the hive
to make honey.

Flowers need to eat too.

They grab a bit of sunlight, 
swallow a few dirty air molecules
and burp oxygen.

Wait - flowers burp? 

Well…inside every leaf,
there is a green pigment called chlorophyll
that converts the sun’s energy into sugar.

With sunlight, water and CO2,
the leaf is a culinary engine,
making food for the flower to eat.

When the days are short and temperatures drop,
the chlorophyll dissolves
and the leaves fade
from green to yellow, orange and red.

Every day of winter,
the daisies sleep
and I eat honey.

Every day of summer,
flowers bloom
and the I buzz.

From one to many,
the flowers grow up and grow old.
The seeds fall
and new flowers grow.

The meadow is crowded now.

That’s the science of daisies,
not-so-secret but easy to ignore.