It’s right to listen to teachers
When they tell a new fact to you,
But still you can keep an open mind
To consider if it’s true.
They say it is because they think it is,
But sometimes they’re mistaken.
Someone told them a long time ago
And they didn’t think to question.
This webinar is a great resource for people who want to persuade their local schools, councillors and MP to introduce healthy, plant-based meal options onto the school menu 🙂
Shavt “Simply Healthy And Vegan Things” is a brilliant shop which I visited while I was in Belgium. They have a great selection of vegan foods for meals, snacks and sweets as well as other things like lip balm!
Unfortunately my camera battery died after I took this picture. But! I want to recommend you go and look at these other blogs which have great posts to show off the wonders of Shavt!
Click here for Sophie’s post on Sophie’s Foodie Files! Which has lots of great pictures of inside Shavt. 😀
Click here for the Bruges Vegan’s post about Shavt! Where you get to see the Shavt vegan cheese, close up and ready to eat 😉
You can also pop over to see the Shavt website! Click Here.
I visited Greenway vegetarian restaurant! I came here twice on my visit to Leuven, and it is a brilliant place. 🙂 You can eat in or take-away, so I did both!
I arrived just when they had opened on my first visit! 
I had vegan spaghetti bolognese with toasted cashews on top to take-away! It was fantastic and delicious!
Here you can see Jermaine posing with it in a cardboard box!
And here he is with it on a plate! 
It really was brilliant food. And excellent service from very friendly people!
On my second visit I chose a “wortelburger” from the menu, which I chose because it said it was vegan! I have since discovered that “wortel” means “carrot” 🙂 This was very tasty, in a toasted bun, with lettuce and pineapple! Scrumptious!
I highly recommend you visit this restaurant, they have a wide selection of tasty foods for all your preferences and desires! I liked the seating too – I sat at a high table on a high stool with my feet dangling off the ground! If that doesn’t sound appealing to you, don’t worry, there are lots of tables at conventional heights.
Click here to find out more about Greenway restaurants:
“Greenway Leuven
Parijsstraat 12
3000 Leuven
016/30.97.35
parijsstraat@greenway.be
Openingsuren: Ma tot za van 11u tot 22u.
Zondag en feestdagen gesloten”
There’s no need to print this out. Just save the picture; then open it in ‘Paint’ or equivalent picture editing program; increase size if necessary to make it a comfortable size to write on; choose a suitably-sized font and fill in the answers using the text tool.
🙂
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crossword for kids
I have been on holiday to Leuven in Belgium! I chose to visit Leuven because I discovered that they have a Loving Hut. After arriving I was ecstatic to find that they also have Vegaverso a vegan cafe, Greenway a vegetarian cafe, and Shavt which is a vegan food shop!
Here I am at Vegaverso, vegan cafe in Leuven, Belgium!
This is a wonderful cafe which serves a delicious and tasty selection of vegan sandwiches and cakes!
It took me a while to decide what to have, there is so much to choose from!
I had a peanut butter and jelly cupcake, a vanilla cupcake and a chocolate cupcake, on different visits! They were all delicious and beautiful!
I also tried a chocolate coconut macaroon, and an oat cake, which were fantastic!
This is what I had on my first visit to Vegaverso! It was the most scrumptious food you will ever taste! I had vegan cheese with vegenaise and a blueberry cupcake! It was wonderful!
The menus there all have different, individually embroidered fabric covers! They are so special and lovely 😀
If you live anywhere nearby, and even if you don’t, I strongly recommend you make a visit to Vegaverso.
They are open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm. You could go now!
I had a wonderful time at this cafe, it is run by friendly people and has a relaxing, happy atmosphere. Brilliant 🙂 Try the chocolate coconut macaroon.
For the rest of the L words, click this pic
To find out more about the wonderful world of Edgar’s Mission Sanctuary, click here 🙂
For the rest of the K words, click this pic or peruse the vegan dictionary in the sidebar
Go to the Music Page for lots more great vegan music 🙂
Working on the vegan dictionary continues to be a very educational experience. Finding words which are defined in a way that normalises animal exploitation, (such as animals being described simply in terms of how they taste or how they are used by humans; or horrible, violent practices described in a brief, matter-of-fact way as if they are perfectly normal and inoffensive) and then redefining them so that they tell the whole story, good or bad. I’m finding out a lot of very interesting facts about animals I previously knew nothing about, as well as a lot of very upsetting things which are hidden from the general population in order to preserve the status quo.
Today I was leafing through the i section of the dictionary and, unusually, finding nothing that needed redefining …. until I reached inhuman, described thus in the Oxford Dictionary:
adjective: brutal; unfeeling; barbarous
And the synonyms for inhuman, given in the thesaurus section, are:
animal, barbaric, barbarous, bestial, bloodthirsty, brutal, brutish, diabolical, fiendish, inhumane, merciless, pitiless, ruthless, savage, unfeeling, unnatural, vicious.
Now I’m confused.
Isn’t it humans who enslave and brutalise animals for pleasure and profit? Isn’t it humans who are so unfeeling that they steal a baby from his mother and kill him so that they can have his mother’s milk for themselves? Isn’t it humans who show no mercy to the billions of terrified, innocent individuals who are savagely and routinely killed en masse?
With the exception of the word ‘animal’ it seems to me that those synonyms should be in the dictionary next to the word human, not inhuman.
The thing is that humans, most of them, do think of themselves as good and kind, decent and compassionate, and the dictionary reflects that. But, however good and charitable a human might be towards other humans, if their compassion doesn’t extend to other species then is not a part of them still barbaric, merciless, unfeeling, pitiless, ruthless and savage, albeit perhaps unwittingly so? Even if they do not commit the fiendish acts themselves; even if they are horrified at the idea of hurting a living being; if they know about it and still choose to pay for it, are they not directly and deliberately responsible for it? And isn’t that diabolical?
The good news is that it is entirely possible to make the Oxford Dictionary definition correct. If all humans went vegan (as nature intended) then the word human really would be synonymous with compassionate, and inhuman would mean what the Oxford Dictionary says it means 🙂
For more fantastic vegan music, visit the Music Page 😀
Herbivore noun
Oxford Dictionary definition: Plant-eating animal
Our definition: Herbivores are animals which are anatomically designed to live on plants. Herbivorous mammals have well-developed facial musculature, fleshy lips, a relatively small opening into the oral cavity and a thickened, muscular tongue. The lips aid in the movement of food into the mouth and, along with the facial (cheek) musculature and tongue, assist in the chewing of food. The lower jaw of plant-eating mammals has a pronounced sideways motion when eating. This lateral movement is necessary for the grinding motion of chewing.
The dentition of herbivores is quite varied depending on the kind of vegetation a particular species is adapted to eat. Although these animals differ in the types and numbers of teeth they posses, the various kinds of teeth when present, share common structural features. The incisors are broad, flattened and spade-like. Canines may be small as in horses, prominent as in hippos, pigs and some primates (these are thought to be used for defense) or absent altogether. The molars, in general, are squared and flattened on top to provide a grinding surface. The molars cannot vertically slide past one another in a shearing/slicing motion (as carnivores’ teeth do), but they do horizontally slide across one another to crush and grind. The surface features of the molars vary depending on the type of plant material the animal eats. The teeth of herbivorous animals are closely grouped so that the incisors form an efficient cropping/biting mechanism, and the upper and lower molars form extended platforms for crushing and grinding.
These animals carefully and methodically chew their food, pushing the food back and forth into the grinding teeth with the tongue and cheek muscles. This thorough process is necessary to mechanically disrupt plant cell walls in order to release the digestible intracellular contents and ensure thorough mixing of this material with their saliva. This is important because the saliva of plant-eating mammals often contains carbohydrate-digesting enzymes which begin breaking down food molecules while the food is still in the mouth.
Because of the relative difficulty with which various kinds of plant foods are broken down (due to large amounts of indigestible fibres), herbivores have significantly longer and in some cases, far more elaborate guts than carnivores. Herbivorous animals that consume plants containing a high proportion of cellulose must “ferment” (digest by bacterial enzyme action) their food to obtain the nutrient value. They are classified as either “ruminants” (foregut fermenters) or hindgut fermenters. The ruminants are the plant-eating animals with the celebrated multiple-chambered stomachs. Herbivorous animals that eat a diet of relatively soft vegetation do not need a multiple-chambered stomach. They typically have a simple stomach, and a long small intestine. These animals ferment the difficult-to-digest fibrous portions of their diets in their hindguts (colons). Many of these herbivores increase the sophistication and efficiency of their GI tracts by including carbohydrate-digesting enzymes in their saliva.
In herbivorous animals, the large intestine tends to be a highly specialized organ involved in water and electrolyte absorption, vitamin production and absorption, and/or fermentation of fibrous plant materials. The colons of herbivores are usually wider than their small intestine and are relatively long.
“Thus, from comparing the gastrointestinal tract of humans to that of carnivores, herbivores and omnivores we must conclude that humankind’s GI tract is designed for a purely plant-food diet.”
For the rest of the redefined words beginning with H, click on this pic (or go to the dictionary in the sidebar)
A friend of Vegan Smythe’s by the name of Sarah told him the story of her light bulb transformation from vegetarian to vegan. He loved the story so much that he made it into a song.
For more lovely vegan music, check out our Music Page 😀
A blind man named Jia Haixia and his friend, a double amputee with no arms named Jia Wenqi, have spent more than 10 years replanting trees to revive the once-barren environment around Yeli Village in northeastern China.
Haixia was born blind in one eye and lost the other in 2000 in a work-related accident. Wenqi lost both of his arms in an accident when he was only 3 years old. Together, they’ve leased 8 acres of land from the government and have begun replanting the land with trees to protect the village from flooding.
Jia Haixia was born blind in one eye and lost the other in a work accident. Together, however, they make an awesome tree-planting team. They wake up at 7 AM to begin their work every day. They don’t have money for saplings so they use tree cuttings. Haixia’s job is to climb trees and get the best…
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Jasmine the rescued greyhound with one of her many fostered youngsters. Click on the pic
Greyhound noun
Oxford Dictionary definition: Slender swift dog used in racing.
Our definition: Greyhounds are quiet, gentle, and loyal. They are very loving and enjoy the company of their humans and other dogs. Jasmine, a beautiful, rescued greyhound puppy who grew up to be a permanent resident at Nuneaton & Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary and an extremely well loved member of their team, is a perfect example of how loving these animals are. Tragically so many gentle individuals like her are exploited and abused by the greyhound racing industry.
And the G g page is done! Click on the pic or go to the dictionary in the sidebar
I’m so grateful to Eva Xanthopoulos for introducing me to vegan music – I had no idea there was so much out there! So now we just have to have a music page 🙂 Click on the link in the sidebar on the right to see a whole bunch of happy vegan music videos, and/or watch this space every day this week where we will post one of them, starting with the hilarious parody of Psy’s hit “Gangnam Style” by Henya Perez and friends.
Here is Vegan Style:
You can find Edmund’s Lunch on the 2 years and up page 🙂
Falcon noun
Oxford Dictionary definition: Small hawk trained to hunt.
Our definition: A falcon is any one of 37 species of raptor in the genus Falco, widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica.
Adult falcons have thin tapered wings, which enable them to fly at high speed and to change direction rapidly. Fledgling falcons, in their first year of flying, have longer flight feathers, which makes their configuration more like that of a general-purpose bird such as a broadwing. This makes it easier to fly while learning the exceptional skills required to be effective hunters as adults.
Peregrine falcons have been recorded diving at speeds of 200 miles per hour (320 km/h), making them the fastest-moving creatures on Earth. Other falcons include the gyrfalcon, lanner falcon, and the merlin. Some small falcons with long narrow wings are called hobbies, and some which hover while hunting are called kestrels.
As is the case with many birds of prey, falcons have exceptional powers of vision; the visual acuity of one species has been measured at 2.6 times that of a normal human.
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Click on the pic for the F page of our vegan dictionary, or see the link in the sidebar to your right
The UK General Election is just weeks away. With MP candidates going all out to win our votes, this is a huge opportunity to push fracking up the political agenda.
Can you ask your local candidates to promise to oppose fracking if they’re elected?
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are appealing to us all to contact our local election candidates and ask them if they will promise to oppose fracking if they are elected.
And they’ve made it so easy: all you have to do is go to their website, and enter your postcode. You will then be told which candidates in your area have not signed the frack-free pledge and enabled to send them an email request to do so.
Let’s all do it! And share it, far and wide.
You can read I’ve got a bamboo toothbrush in Why are you a vegan? and other wacky verse for kids or here where you’ll also find links to how to get your own bamboo toothbrush 🙂
Maddicts (graphic novel for teens and up) …. starts tomorrow 😮
We are having fun making videos of some of our stories being read aloud and have decided to make Story Time a permanent fixture on our site. So, if you want to be read a story, just click on the link in the sidebar to your right (or the big picture above) and choose a video 🙂 There are only two on there at the moment, but give us time, we’ll keep them coming 😉
Welcome back to story time 🙂 sit back and relax, we’re going to tell you about the lovely Deidra
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we will begin 😀
Click on the pic to read this new short fairy tale
Or find it on the Fairy Tales shelf along with a couple of others 🙂
will be on the shelf tomorrow! 😀
The bees are back in town! Hurrah!
See if you can spot this lil’ lady in every picture:
Elephant noun
Oxford Dictionary definition: Largest living land animal with trunk and ivory tusks.
Our definition: Elephants are large mammals of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea. Two species are traditionally recognised: the African elephant and the Asian elephant. Male African elephants are the largest surviving terrestrial [land] animals and can reach a height of 4 metres and weigh 7,000 kg. All elephants have a long trunk, used for many purposes, particularly breathing, lifting water and grasping objects. All African elephants, male and female, have tusks whereas only some Asian males have tusks. About 50% of Asian females have short tusks known as tushes – which have no pulp inside. Usually in mammals tusks are enlarged canine teeth, but in elephants they are actually elongated incisors and are essentially no different from other teeth. One third of the tusk is actually hidden from view, embedded deep in the elephant’s head. This part of the tusk is a pulp cavity made up of tissue, blood and nerves. The visible, ivory part of the tusk is made of dentine with an outer layer of enamel. Their tusks can serve as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. Elephants’ large ear flaps help to control their body temperature. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs while Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs.
Elephants are herbivorous and can be found in different habitats including savannahs, forests, deserts and marshes. They prefer to stay near water. Females, known as cows, tend to live in family groups, which can consist of one female with her calves or several related females with offspring. The groups are led by an individual known as the matriarch, often the oldest cow. Elephants have a fission-fusion society in which multiple family groups come together to socialise. Males, known as bulls, leave their family groups when they reach puberty, and may live alone or with other males. Adult bulls mostly interact with family groups when looking for a mate. Calves are the centre of attention in their family groups and rely on their mothers for as long as three years. Elephants can live up to 70 years in the wild. They communicate by touch, sight, smell and sound; elephants use infrasound (low frequency sound), and seismic communication (sometimes called vibrational communication) over long distances. Elephant intelligence has been compared with that of primates and cetaceans. They have self-awareness and show empathy for dying or dead individuals of their kind.
African elephants are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, while the Asian elephant is classed as endangered. One of the biggest threats to elephant populations is the ivory trade, as the animals are poached for their ivory tusks. Other threats to wild elephants include habitat destruction and conflicts with local people.
Horribly, in addition to murdering them for their ivory, human beings have exploited elephants for entertainment in zoos and circuses for centuries; and now the military thinks they might be useful for sniffing out bombs!
Thank goodness for The Elephant Sanctuary, Tennessee, a natural habitat refuge developed specifically for African and Asian elephants, which is home to beautiful animals, rescued or retired from zoos and circuses, who can now live out their lives in a safe haven dedicated to their well-being.
There’s a spider in my shower cap
And she doesn’t want to go.
She’s determined to hang on,
Whether I shake or whether I blow.
So I guess if it’s that important,
And she really wants to stay,
I don’t mind getting my hair wet.
It looks better on her anyway.
We were so excited yesterday when we discovered, in our Reader, this brilliant post by Chrissy from Hold The Eggplant. Hold The Eggplant is all about navigating the vegan lifestyle, looking at fashion, food, travel, book reviews and all sorts, from a vegan perspective. We thank Chrissy from the bottom of our hearts for this enthusiastic review of our site.
Veganism is growing by the day (hooray!), but it’s not just grown-ups who are embracing compassionate living; many children and young people are too! Whether raised from birth as vegans, or choosing to embrace compassionate living as young people, vegan numbers are growing and times are changing, and I for one couldn’t be happier about it.
Most of the information available for vegans centres on food and health; there are countless sites we can search for menu inspiration and recipes, and tips to eat better. Some of these sites are family friendly, but few tackle the process of what it actually means to grow up vegan. Sure, we grown-ups know that being vegan is the most life-affirming action we can take, but how does that translate for children and young people? What resources are available for them to tackle the complex terrain of living vegan in a non-vegan world?
This is what makes Violet’s Veg*n E-Comics
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Chickens are people
Just like dogs.
They enjoy dust baths
And jumping on logs.
Chickens will play games
Like ‘chase’ and ‘steal your smalls’.
They’ll splash you in the paddling pool,
Though not keen on fetching balls.
Some of them are gentle,
Some of them are tough.
Some of them are bossy,
Some timid and soft as fluff.
They all have personality
And every one is different.
Just like Rover and Fido and Max
They might be quiet or exuberant.
The Sustrans website will tell you all about the National Cycle Network in the UK which “is a series of traffic-free paths and quiet, on-road cycling and walking routes, that connect to every major town and city. The Network passes within a mile of half of all UK homes and stretches over 14,000 miles across the UK.”
They also have a shop where you can buy maps, books, clothes and accessories etc, although you might have a good cycle shop in your own neighbourhood where you can get everything you need; or, even better, check out the second hand shops and the shops of animal-friendly charities and re-use something someone else doesn’t need any more (for a fraction of the price).
Yay for happy endings! Tissues at the ready … and click PLAY 😉
Bless his heart and bless all the people that have dedicated their lives to helping and saving animals. There is hope for the animals in this broken world because of people like you
Click on the pic or find it on the Fairy Tales shelf.
This one’s short and sweet and set in the present day.
We hope you like Marcus and his story 🙂
Our new fairy tale, Marcus’s Wishes, will be here very soon!
Tomorrow in fact!
Watch this space 😉
Donkey noun
Oxford Dictionary definition: 1. Domestic ass 2. colloquial stupid person
Our definition: The donkey’s wild ancestor, the African Wild Ass, is well suited to life in a desert or semi-desert environment, having a tough digestive system which can break down desert vegetation and extract moisture from food efficiently. They can also go without water for a fairly long time. Their large ears give them an excellent sense of hearing and help in cooling. Because of the sparse vegetation in their environment wild asses live somewhat separated from each other (except for mothers and young), unlike the tightly grouped herds of wild horses. They have very loud voices, which can be heard for over 3 km (1.9 mi), which helps them to keep in contact with other asses over the wide spaces of the desert.
Mature males defend large territories around 23 square kilometres in size, marking them with dung heaps – an essential marker in the flat, monotonous terrain. Due to the size of these ranges, the dominant male cannot exclude other males. Rather, intruders are tolerated—recognized and treated as subordinates, and kept as far away as possible from any of the resident females.
Wild asses can run swiftly, almost as fast as a horse. However, their tendency is to not flee right away from a potentially dangerous situation, but to investigate first before deciding what to do. When they need to, they can defend themselves with kicks from both their front and hind legs.
Though the species itself is under no threat of extinction, due to abundant domestic stock, the two extant wild subspecies are both listed as critically endangered. African wild asses have been captured for domestication for centuries, and this, along with interbreeding between wild and domestic animals, has caused a distinct decline in population numbers. There are now only a few hundred individuals left in the wild. These animals are also hunted for food and for traditional medicine in both Ethiopia and Somalia. Competition with domestic livestock for grazing, and restricted access to water supplies caused by agricultural developments, pose further threats to their survival. The African wild ass is legally protected in the countries where it is currently found, although these measures often prove difficult to enforce.
There are more than 40 million ‘domesticated’ donkeys in the world, mostly in developing countries where they are used principally as draught or pack animals. Working donkeys are often associated with those living at or below subsistence levels. Small numbers of donkeys are kept for breeding or as pets in developed countries.
The Donkey Sanctuary in Devon works hard to transform the quality of life for donkeys, mules and people worldwide through greater understanding, collaboration and support, and by promoting lasting, mutually life-enhancing relationships. They work inclusively with people frequently marginalised within their own countries and communities, whether due to poverty, ignorance, race, gender or disabilities. They treat every interaction as a two-way opportunity to learn and to teach. “We know that it is only together that we can help donkey owners and carers become donkey welfare ambassadors wherever they live and work.”
Dr Elisabeth Svendsen, in love with them since childhood, made it her life’s mission to rescue abused, neglected and abandoned donkeys and founded The Donkey Sanctuary in 1969. She said,
“To me they are the most beautiful, the most underrated animals in the world – and, as long as they need my help, they shall have it.”
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is finished for the time being.
Click on the picture or go to the dictionary in the sidebar 🙂 And now, on to E e
Crab noun
Oxford Dictionary definition: 1. Shellfish with 10 legs 2. This as food
Our definition: 1. Crabs are sentient beings who live in all the world’s oceans, in fresh water, and on land, are generally covered with a thick exoskeleton and have a single pair of claws. They attract a mate through chemical (pheromones), visual, acoustic or vibratory means. Pheromones are used by most fully aquatic crabs, while terrestrial and semi-terrestrial crabs often use visual signals, such as fiddler crab males waving their large claw to attract females. Crabs are mostly active animals with complex behaviour patterns. They can communicate by drumming or waving their pincers. Males will fight to win females or to defend territory. Fiddler Crabs dig burrows in sand or mud, which they use for resting, hiding, mating and to defend against intruders. Crabs are omnivores, feeding primarily on algae, and taking any other food, including molluscs, worms, other crustaceans, fungi, bacteria and detritus, depending on their availability and the crab species.
2. Crabs are boiled alive by humans who want to eat them.
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The Cc page is done now (click on the pic or go to the dictionary in the sidebar).
I’ll be starting on Dd today 😀
I’m working on the Cs now and was delighted to find that the first word which needed redefining was Cake:
Oxford Dictionary definition: Mixture of flour, butter, eggs, sugar etc. baked in the oven.
Our definition: There is absolutely no need of eggs and butter when making a cake. There are so many delicious vegan, and even raw vegan, cake recipes – some very sophisticated and complicated and some, my favourites, needing nothing more than flour, sugar (or other natural sweetener such as agave), vegetable oil and water. And I do not exaggerate when I say that they taste better than any cake I tasted in my pre-vegan days. But you don’t need to take my word for it, look at oatielover’s chocolate cake and Lisa’s vanilla layer cake or any of the thousands of vegan cake recipes out there – there’s something for everyone. All this typing’s making me peckish, please excuse me a moment while I grab one of the blueberry muffins I made earlier 😉
And talking of Blueberry Muffins – this is how I made them:
I mixed together 8 ounces of organic spelt, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 4 ounces of organic sugar, 4 tablespoons of organic vegetable oil, and about 150 ml of water. Then, when that was all combined into a smooth mixture I added a load of rinsed organic blueberries and mixed those in well. I then generously filled 6 large paper cake cases with the mixture and baked them in a muffin pan at 180°c (fan oven) for half an hour. Easy as pie! Or rather, cake!
Icing is optional but highly recommended 🙂
Don’t fancy blueberries? What about a butterfly cake?
Same recipe, minus the blueberries. When they’re cold, scoop out the top of the cake, fill the hole with icing, cut the cut-out bit in half and stick it in the icing to look like wings.
Anything omnivores can do, vegans can do better! Stick that in your cake-hole Oxford Dictionary!
Think of the bears …. save the bears
“‘From caring comes courage.’ We might add that from it also comes wisdom. It’s rather significant, we think, that those who have no compassion have no wisdom. Knowledge, yes; cleverness, maybe; wisdom, no. A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn’t really care. Wisdom does. We also consider it significant that cor, the Latin word for “heart”, is the basis for the word courage. Piglet put it this way: ‘She isn’t Clever, Kanga isn’t, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about it.'”
Benjamin Hoff
The Tao of Pooh
Page 128
Compiling the vegan dictionary is taking a long time and I won’t be able to complete a letter in one day as I naïvely first thought. I have only just finished Bb so won’t be able to share any C words until at least tomorrow 🙂 In the meantime, Miranda thought it might be a good idea to post an excerpt of Bb – so here it is:
Bee noun
Oxford Dictionary definition: Four-winged stinging insect, collecting nectar and pollen and producing honey and wax.
Our definition: There are lots of different types of bee in the UK, around 250 species – 24 species of bumble bee, 225 species of solitary bee and just one species of honey bee. Honey bees will live through the winter, eating and working all winter long, which of course requires a large store of food – hence the honey they’ve worked hard for all summer. With Bumble bees however, the new queens, after mating, find somewhere to hibernate and the rest of the colony dies off. While hibernating she does not need to eat so there are no honey stores. In the spring when she has to work hard, she makes a small pot of honey for herself. Solitary bees typically produce neither honey nor wax. They are important pollinators as the females, who are all fertile, build their own nests and take care of their own young so pollen is gathered for provisioning the nest with food for their brood. Bees gathering nectar (eg honey bees) may accomplish pollination, but bees that are deliberately gathering pollen (eg solitary orchard mason bees) are more efficient pollinators. There are also 500 species of stingless bee
Violet's Vegan Comics 
