Dear Future President,

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I’m writing this letter to inform you of the fact that millions of honey bees were killed during an insecticide spray to kill mosquitoes carrying the zika virus. Honey bees play an extremely vital role in our lives and without them we will have to undergo drastic change.

Many people don't know just how important honey bees are. Did you know that the honey bee is the world's most important pollinator of food crops? Many important fruit and vegetables have to be pollinated in order to be produced. For example, all melons and citrus fruits require pollination. Therefore, saving the bees also saves the watermelon!

The Bees have been in danger for a long time now. According to www.nature.org ‘s article “Bees and Agriculture,” “the number of bee colonies has dropped to about 2.5 million from over 4 million.” That drastic decrease in Bee population leaves a lot of extra work for the remaining Bees. Bees are the leading pollinator in the world and without pollination it is impossible to have crop bearing plants. To sum up what I’m saying: without the bees it would be next to impossible to yield the food crop needed to support our growing population. With the pesticide spraying for zika, we are only making this growing problem even worse. Instead of hurting and destroying the honey bees, we need to assist them in increasing their population to what it used to be. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could spend more of it’s funding towards assisting and protecting honey bee hives until the species is thriving again.

According to Ben Guarino of the Washington Post, in the article, " ‘Like it’s been nuked’:Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes:” “in Dorcester County, S.C. millions of honey bees were killed inside just one farm?” Over 46 hives died, totaling nearly 2.5 million bees. Just to put that into perspective, can you imagine if 2.5 million people were killed in one bombing? That's almost 19 times the amount of casualties that occurred from the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and that's only one bee farm.

I understand that the spraying of pesticides to fight the zika virus is very important, however, there are other solutions that could be used in order to preserve our environment as well as the insects that live in it. For example, more time and money should be spent on locating and destroying mosquitoes at the weakest point of their life cycle, their larvae stage. The spraying of pesticides is only a short term solution. Eventually the mosquitoes will grow immune to the pesticides we are using against them, however, if we destroy them in their larvae stage, it offers a much more effective solution. Not only will we fight the zika virus in a more effective way, we will also be saving the lives of millions of extremely important honey bees all over the country. The EPA could easily allocate funds towards this prevention method to keep the Zika virus at bay without killing millions of honey bees.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter, I know you have a very busy schedule. Congratulations on winning the election. I look forward to seeing all the great things you will do for this country.

Sincerely, Hunter S.