It is summer and we honey bees have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, we can finally get out of our hive — our home — after hibernating. We get out in time to collect pollen and nectar from our favourite plants. Yummm!
It’s also the season when our hive is packed with our family which suddenly expands by thousands.
Unfortunately, it is also the season when we work so hard that scientists estimate our lifespan to be just six weeks, whereas during winter we can live for four to nine months!
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Now this made me wonder, why do we have seasons at all? So I asked my grandmother who is seven months old and hence much wiser!
She said it is because our earth is tilted!
“Huh?”
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“Okay, now imagine a chopstick piercing through the centre of the earth and tilting the planet slightly to the right. This chopstick is the earth’s axis.”
“So what does the axis do?”
“The earth rotates around the sun while it is still tilted. So, the bottom end of the chopstick is closer to the sun and the top end is away. When it is winter in countries in the Northern hemisphere, it is summer in countries in the Southern hemisphere.”
“So when the bottom end is away from the sun, the top is closer. It is the other way around!”
“That’s correct.”
Wow! Who knew good ol’ grandma knew all about chopsticks and seasoning…I mean, seasons!