Olivia Conniff
Core Bio 10H
11/18/18
Current Events #8
Milius, Susan. “Hemp Fields Offer a Late-Season Pollen Source for Stressed Bees.” Science News, 19 Nov. 2018, www.sciencenews.org/article/cannabis-fields-offer-late-season-pollen-source-stressed-bees.
For Current Event #8, I chose to read “Hemp Fields Offer a Late-Season Pollen Source for Stressed Bees” by Susan Milius. Hemp is a “no-high” variety of cannabis that is grown specifically for industrial use. They do not offer nutrients such as nectar to insects and therefore rely solely on the wind in order to spread pollen. However, recently a large number of bees gathered in experimental hemp plots that were being studied by Colton O’Brien of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He discovered that bees in 23 out of the 66 genera known to live in Colorado ended up in O’Brien’s trap. O’Brien and his adviser, Arathi Seshadri, think that this is the first survey of bees in cannabis fields. “You walk through fields and you hear buzzing everywhere,” O’Brien said. The reason that so many bees flocked to the hemp was because of a minimal food supply. While hemp does not provide many nutrients it serves as a rare food source for the hungry bees, that have really been struggling lately with their health, and are threatened by extinction. O’Brien urged crop scientists now developing the pest-fighting strategies for outdoor hemp to be mindful of bee health.
This article is extremely successful in informing the reader about the dangers that bees are facing in regards to not having enough pollen to sustain themselves and their young. The number of bee colonies per hectare has declined by 90 percent since 1962. The bees cannot keep pace with the winter die-off rates, habitat loss, and mass food consumption. Conservationists worry about the fates of the many, less-studied wild bees.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article because it was very easy to understand, using simple, but not boring, words and phrasing. Milius explained very well the main idea of the article as well as stayed focused on what the reader should take away from it. I was able to clearly understand what the article was about and why it was written despite the fact that I had little to no knowledge on the subject. The article was very well done, however, I do have a few suggestions as for how to improve it. First, I found that it was a bit repetitive. Because of this, it tended to be confusing at times, and harder to comprehend. A way to fix this is to make sure everything that you are writing is essential to the review, if it is not it can be removed, to help keep the article from being too repetitive and confusing. Also, I think that if a few quotes more from the article were included in the article the reader would be able to better understand it, and see it from a different perspective.
Maya Brinster
ReplyDeleteCore Bio 10H | Mr. Ippolito
December 5, 2018
Current Event #10
Milius, Susan. “Hemp Fields Offer a Late-Season Pollen Source for Stressed Bees.”
Science News, 19 Nov. 2018,
www.sciencenews.org/article/cannabis-fields-offer-late-season-pollen-source-stressed-bees.
For current event #10, I read Olivia’s review on the article “Hemp Fields Offer a Late-Season Pollen Source for Stressed Bees.” Author Susan Milius writes about the rare attraction that bees have to hemp fields, or industrial cannabis, which offer very little nutrients. Scientists say that because of the lack of food sources bees have, they will feed on almost any food source available, even if it is not sufficient to their health. Olivia does a great job explaining this, and uses very clear words that make her background information easy to understand. She also provides readers with quotes as well as numbers, which backs up her information and makes her arguments much stronger. Olivia makes sure to note the implications of this situation and is very persuasive when she talks about how humans need to help save the bees and make decent food sources more available.
Although this review is very well-written, there are a few minor adjustments Olivia should make in order to improve her writing. A few of her sentences were phrased a bit awkwardly or was too wordy. She can easily fix this by editing the sentences to make them flow with her writing even better. I also feel as if Olivia’s review ended rather abruptly, however, this is also a very small error and can easily be corrected by the addition of a concluding sentence to wrap everything up. Overall, however, Olivia is a great writer and it was very hard to find errors in her review.
Olivia and Milius’ writing were both impactful. I previously did not care about bees at all before reading this. However, now I am so much more aware about the current dire state of the bees and what we can do to protect them. This article as well as Olivia’s writing has made me more cautious of the ways in which all animals are suffering and how humans have the ability to prevent this from happening and preserve their lives.