The owner of a small construction company is helping the hungry — hungry bees, that is — by feeding them sugar water.
In a viral Instagram video, the owner of A Cat In The Attic Services, a construction company in Waynesville, North Carolina, shows how he keeps the bees in his yard happy with a "bee bar," a container filled with rocks for the bees to perch on and a mixture of one part sugar to three parts water.
"I fill this up a couple of times a day," he says, before jokingly adding, "They like me being their sugar daddy."
Bees are one of the types of animals that are most adversely affected by changing temperatures, which are becoming more extreme with each passing year.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, "climate change is a significant factor contributing to the decline in pollinator populations," since the overheating of our planet causes changes in our weather patterns, "altering the synchrony between flowering plants and their pollinators" and causing them "nutritional stress."
"Radical shifts in temperature, droughts, and floods are disrupting native ranges for pollinators, making ecosystems unsuitable for the processes needed to sustain populations," the agency explained.
This is a big problem, not just for the bees but for everyone, because pollinators are so critical to making sure our food supply stays plentiful.
Therefore, when you become a sugar daddy to bees, you become a sugar daddy to all of us.
However, there is an ongoing debate within the beekeeping community about whether feeding bees sugar water is the best way to help them. (This debate rages on in the comments section of the original Instagram post as well.)
While it is far from a settled issue, bee experts seem to agree that sugar water can help save a struggling colony but that too much of it can be like feeding the bees junk food.
The absolute best thing you can do to help bees is to plant and maintain a garden with native flower species that the bees like to pollinate.
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