Bee-coming greener in Holland, MI

*This is part of The Ranchor issue of The Anchor, which is a satire edition of our student newspaper. None of this article is meant to be taken as fact.*

TAKING NEW HEIGHTS — Now that the bees are back in business, brave workers, such as
Barry and his colleagues can pollinate across the nation. (Affinity)

By: Sriracha Maserati

Life is greener than ever! Not only are the plants flourishing on this land, but agriculture is restored with the help of the Bees Engaging in Environmental Society. Also known as BEES, this group formed when several scientists from Holland, MI had dropped all their lifelong re search studies and decided to dedicate their knowledge to ward bee restoration. Not only has this improved the population of bees in the environment, but it also has improved the agriculture, economy and health of the Americans.

Reflecting back in the year 2020, the bee population hit an all time low. There was an estimate of only 7,843 bees left in America. Crops were weak, farmers were poor and Whole Foods had shut down. Americans relied on their vitamin pills in addition to Mac n’ Cheese and chicken nuggets. Life in America was grey and gloomy without the variety of all the plants that the bees contribute to.

But everything changed when these scientists wanted to include pollinating plants back into their diet. This was not only a group of environmental scientists, but also professionals in physics, chemistry and even psychology had contributed to ward this project. Their biggest action step was to fish for bees to create bee farms.

Instead of “Tulip Time” in May, the new trend was “Alfalfa Adventures All Year.” This event invaded the Holland area and attracted tourists from global areas of the world to see the annual bumble bee pollination. Alfalfa Adventures All Year allowed for these scientists to safely capture the bees, trap them into a honeycomb farm and let the busyness begin. The most common issue that these scientists came across was to capture the queen bee. Without the queen bee, offspring cannot be produced. However, once the next generation was created, twot-hirds of the colony was released into the environment, while the other third would stay back in the farming honeycomb with its sole purpose to create more offspring.

After ten long years, the scientists from BEES finally announced that the bee population is stable. Crops are restored and flourishing, the farming industry is the new field to prosper into and the economy, including Whole Foods, replicates the 1950s.

The question becomes, what caused this and how can we prevent another bee depression? Several believe that it was just nature playing its role to eliminate the next species extinction. On the other hand, others believed that humans were the underlying cause. No one distinct cause was the reason for this event of the sudden drop in bees. Several theories arose, as each could have contributed to the decline in the lives of bees.

Who is the enemy to blame? Parasites and disease may have harmed the bees. Bacteria may have strengthened their resistance against the bees’ immunity, causing a black and yellow plague. Pesticides could have also been the cause, making pollen unappealing to bees if the plants were covered in harmful chemicals. Climate change could have also affected these tiny creatures as the plants were blooming sooner than the anticipated pollinating seasons.

And last, but not least, technology may have been the largest contributing factor to the death of bees. Urbanization, the process of making open land into industrial markets, is a large factor because this strips the bees of their homes, mostly killing them off or forcing them to search for lesser, unwanted trees. Cars are also another deadly factor, since these vehicles are 70 mph torpedoes, constantly smashing innocent bees on the windshield causing fatal damage and even death.

Additionally, as harmless as cell phones appear, they are actually one of the more detrimental causes of the declining bee population. The wave signals that cell phones receive and emit confuse the bees as they migrate from flower to flower and eventually back to their honeycomb. Because of these wave signals, they disrupt the bee navigational instincts toward misleading directions where they cannot re turn back to their beehives.