Someday you might be invited to compete on Jepoardy and you’ll thank our trust blog contributors for this nerdy information. Did you know that a musician named Gustav Holst was so fascinated by astronomy that he wrote several pieces of classical music about planets? In fact, he wrote music for all of the planets except Earth and Pluto. Why was Pluto excluded? Holst wrote The Planets in 1918, before Pluto was discovered!

Remember, the planets were all named for ancient gods and goddesses, so when it was time for Holst to title his music about the planets, he chose titles that reminded people of the god or goddess for whom the planet was named.

Mars, the Bringer of War; Venus, the Bringer of Peace; Mercury, the Winged Messenger; Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity; Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age; Uranus, the Magician; and Neptune, the Mystic.

Want a little preview? Here’s Holst’s Mars: Bringer of War, by Gustav Holst

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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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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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