The winning honeybee is number 5! And yes… I’m in disguise… as a honeybee. There are those people in our office who say it looks just like me… if I were a honeybee. The only thing the bee would have to do is to drink five cups of coffee, run around the office, buzz ideas and cause something to explode. Thanks to everyone who participated in our honeybee contest. If you guessed the winning number (that would be #5), we’ll have an electronic gift certificate e-mailed to you later today. Most importantly, thanks to HelptheHoneyBees.com and Haagen-Dazs for raising awareness around this issue.

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You might think that we’re just physical science people, but we do have a soft spot in our hearts for living things… especially honeybees. There’s a huge honeybee problem and Haagen-Dazs has done a great job with their HelptheHoneyBees.com website to help raise awareness around this issue. Some of the fine people who find employment at SteveSpanglerScience.com have gotten hooked on making their own honeybee using the Haagen-Dazs site.

So, we’ve created a little contest for our blog readers. Below you’ll find 16 people who work on the web team at SteveSpanglerScience.com… and I’m included in the mix. If you can correctly identify my number, you’ll win a $10 gift certificate from SteveSpanglerScience.com. Just post your comment below with your first name and real e-mail address (your e-mail will not be visible on the comment) and we’ll post the winning number on Friday morning (May 2, 2008). Hey, no cheating allowed - it’s for the honeybees. Oh, one more thing… since this is my contest, I’m allowed to be in disguise (very sneaky)! Go ahead… place your guess.

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Honeybees do a lot more than make honey! For thousands of years, honeybees have been important for honey, yes, but mostly for the incredible job they do of pollinating flowers and crops. Without the honeybees, there would be no more flowers. . . no more crops. . . no more blossoms of any kind.

When you put that glowing golden honey on your toast, look at it closely and consider that a honeybee had to visit hundreds of thousands of blossoms to get that tablespoon of honey you’re going to eat. Think about the ingredients in your bread. Think about the milk you’re drinking; without honeybees, there would be nothing for the cow to eat, and then there would be no milk, no hamburgers, no ice cream, and no cheese.

Without honeybees, there would soon be very little for people to eat. Think about that! Think very hard, because the collapse of honeybee colonies is a phenomenon that has recently been occurring all over the world at an alarmingly increasing rate, and nobody knows why.

What can you do about this? For starters, you can plant some of the flowers that honeybees love; this might attract the honeybees to your yard! Honeybees love sunflowers, violets, jasmine, lavender, coreopsis, trumpet flowers, cosmos, coneflowers, and thyme. All of these flowers smell wonderful! When the honeybees come to feast on the pollen, leave them alone. Don’t chase them, or step on them. Just watch them do their job, buzzing from flower to flower, and listen to them hum as they work!

If you go to the Haagen-Dazs website, you can learn more about the honeybees.

What do honeybees actually do all day? We have exclusive, hidden video showing their secret activity. Okay… I’m lying. It’s just a video of a guy with bees, but it’s pretty darn interesting.

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