Get Fit and Save Bees!
Advice from The First Lady of Fitness, Fashion, and Fun and Pittsburgh personal trainer, Independent Beachbody Coach, and life coach, Jackie Omotalade:
Gardening is a wonderful, low impact work out. Weeding or cultivating can burn around 200 calories an hour. Doing more strenuous garden work such as clearing weeds or hauling rocks can even burn as much as 600 calories per hour. Experts suggest that low-to-moderate intensity activities done for as little as 30 minutes a day have health benefits.
If that wasn’t beneficial enough! Many of you have heard in the news that disorder, diseases, parasitic mites and other stressors continue to take a devastating toll on U.S. honey bee populations so much so that there a reported decline in honeybee populations. Many people have begun to wonder how they can help save the bees. Gardening can actually be used to help save the honey bees, so you can get fit and help the environment! By planting bee-friendly flowers which provide bees with food (nectar), you can help keep bees alive. Create a honey bee sanctuary in a pot on your windowsill, in your backyard, or community garden.
When gardening to encourage honey bees, choose flowers that produce nectar and pollen like:
- Sunflower
- Daises
- Cosmos
- Zinnias
- Dahlias
- Asters
- Marigolds
- Hyacinths
- Hollyhocks
- Crocuses
- Foxglove
- Geraniums
DirectGardening.com – Offers quality plants at great prices, come see what we mean!
Gardening provides the regular physical exercise listed in the prevention of heart disease, obesity, adult-onset diabetes and high blood pressure. It also provides the strength training important in the prevention of osteoporosis. Put a gallon sprinkling can full of water in each hand and you got your 8 pound dumbbells. Finish off with lifting a wheelbarrow and you got your bicep workout.
Select an assortment of flowers that bloom successively over the spring, summer, and fall, so that the bees will have food in every season.
Blue, purple, orange, and yellow flowers attract the most bees so be sure to plant plenty of them.
Plant patches of like flowers in close proximity.
Do Not use pesticides!
Now is the time to get fit!