Persuasive speech on honey bees

Persuasive Speech Title
Name: Student Name Here

Topic: Bees.

General Purpose: To persuade.

Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience that they should save bees.

Introduction
I. Attention-Getter: How many of you like honey or flowers?

II. Central Idea: Bees are what make honey and are also a part of the group of insects that pollinate flowers and food, and we should help to save the bee population.

III. Credibility: I’ve always been interested in bees and these last few weeks and I’ve done extensive research on bees going extinct and how we can help stop that.

IV. Preview: Today, I will be telling you about why bees are becoming endangered and how that will affect us, ways we can help contribute to the stabilization and growth of the bee population, and how the world will benefit from the bees not becoming endangered.

Body
I. Need: Not a lot of people may know this but bees are quickly becoming endangered.

A. According Bee Facts, a book written by the National Resource Defense Council, “In the United States alone, more than 25 percent of the managed honey bee population has disappeared since 1990.”

B. Bees are becoming endangered in several ways.

1. On way bees are becoming extinct is that they are losing their habitat.

a. According to the article Bad news for bees, “Habitat loss, which has reduced the abundance and diversity of floral resources and nesting opportunities, has undoubtedly been a major long-term driver through the 20th century and still continues today” (Science).

b. Deforestation and development causes plants and flowers that usually help bees survive, go away meaning the bees have less and less means of survival.

2. Another way bees are becoming endangered is through pesticides.
1. Tepedino says “bees, as low-fecundity organisms, are very susceptible to insecticides and populations are slow to recover from perturbations” (Tepedino, V. J.).

2. An experiment by Dave Goulson and Elizabeth Nicholls was done in 2012 stated that, “Treated colonies had a significantly reduced growth rate and suffered an 85% reduction in production of new queens compared with control colonies” (Goulson, D. & Nicholls, E).

C. If bees go extinct then we will lose many resources.

1. We will no longer have any natural honey since bees are the producer of said honey.

2. We will lose pollinators meaning less crops and flowers will be pollinated, leading to a fall in crop harvests.

3. If we lose bees than the NRDC says we are putting Apples, oranges, lemons, and limes, Broccoli, Onions, Blueberries, cherries, and many other foods at risk. (Bee Facts)

Connective: Now that you know why bees are endangered and what will happen if we lose them, let’s talk about ways we can help the bees.

II. Satisfaction: You can do many things to help save bees.

A. One thing you can do is to make a little bee fountain.

1. Make a small water bath for bees and fill them up with pebbles.

2. The pebbles make sure the bees don’t drown while they get a drink.

B. You can also plant a pollinator garden according to Moisset, B. & Buchmann, from the USDA.

1. They say to “Plant your garden with native and bee friendly plants.” (Moisset, B. & Buchmann).

2. “Plant native plants from your ecoregion” meaning flowers native to where you live.

C. The USDA also says to avoid pesticides or choose non-chemical solutions to insect problems. (Moisset, B. & Buchmann)

D. According to the USDA you should also provide nesting habitats for bees.

1. A simple bare spot here and there (no mulch or grass, just bare soil) may be enough for an aggregation of hard working soil nesting native bees. (Moisset, B. & Buchmann)

2. A sand pile may be even better.

3. Build or buy your own bee houses.

Connective: So now that you know how to help save the bees, let me tell you how these efforts will pay off.

III. Visualization: If bees don’t become extinct then our ecosystem will continue to thrive.

A. We will still have beautiful flowers to look at every day.

B. Our crops will still be pollinated meaning we will still have a good supply of food left.

C. **Note that this Visualization is weak, further supporting material is required***

Conclusion
I. Review: So today I told you about why and how bees are going extinct and how that extinction will affect us, then I explained ways we can help contribute to the stabilization and growth of the bee population. Finally, I talked about how the world will benefit from the bees not being endangered.

II. Restate central idea: Bees are an essential part of pollination and honey production and will have a detrimental impact on the world if they were to go extinct so we should save them.

III. Call to action: So, when you go home plant these seeds so that you can save the bees.

Works Cited

Bee Facts. (2011). Why we need bees. Retrieved from https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/bees.pdf

Goulson, D. & Nicholls, E. (March 2015). Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers. Retrieved from http://science.sciencemag.org.libproxy.lib.csusb.edu/content/347/6229/1255957

Moisset, B. & Buchmann, S. (2011). Bee basics: an introduction to our native bees. Washington D.C.: Pollinator Partnership Publication.

Science. (2012). Bad news for bees. Retrieved from http://science.sciencemag.org.libproxy.lib.csusb.edu/content/336/6079/275.3

Tepedino, V. J. (1979). The importance of bees and other insect pollinators in maintaining floral species composition. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stab