Page 15 - Overview Summer 2018

What’s the Buzz?
For a honey bee the day is truly busy. Buzzing from place to place, bees look for nectar or water to take back to help support their colony. The rest of their short lives are
spent cleaning the hive, taking care of younger siblings and disposing of dead older ones, caring for the queen,
and building, guarding, and cooling
the hive. Stinging you is the last thing they want to do.
Bees play a crucial role in our environment as they are pollinators for flowering plants, many of those in agriculture. Another way they benefit us is the delicious honey bees produce.
As hard as they work and as
strong as they are, bees across
the country are disappearing due to a poorly understood condition known
as Colony Collapse Disorder. You can help support bees and protect our
food supply by taking a few simple steps:
Plant a wide variety of plants - Choose your plants so that
something is blooming from early spring until late fall. Look
for a variety of colors and shapes.
Plant native species - Plants that belong in this area are four times more likely to attract
bees than exotic species.
Avoid pesticides - Don’t buy plants that have been pretreated
with pesticides. Any pesticides you do use should be applied sparingly
and for a specific reason.
Medication Disposal
You’ve finally decided it’s time to clean out under the bathroom sink or the medicine cabinet. Opening the door, you see the usual suspects: shampoo, makeup and mouthwash. Over on the side are some leftover prescription medications from a couple of years ago. While reorganizing will take care of most of your job, some of this stuff has got to go. The question is:
What should you do with the outdated and unneeded medications?
In the past, we were told to flush unwanted medications down the toilet. Unfortunately, this is no longer good advice. Antibiotics, hormones, blood pressure medications, mood stabilizers and more can be found in water flowing from treatment plants back into rivers. That same water is used downstream for drinking and irrigation. While the concentration of these medications may be very low, sometimes in the parts per trillion, the effect of long-term, low level exposure on people and the environment has not been studied and is unknown.
Fortunately, the Overland Park Police Department has established two free, easy, safe and secure locations where you can properly dispose of unwanted or unneeded medications. Located in the W. Jack Sanders Justice Center, 12400 Foster, and the Myron E. Scafe Justice Building, 8500 Antioch, the drug collection units are available between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. weekday. Pills and other medications should be left in their containers. This service is completely anonymous.
Items that can be dropped off include prescription and over-the-counter medications, patches, ointments,
vitamins and pet medications. Items that are not accepted include needles, thermometers, hydrogen peroxide, inhalers and aerosol cans.
15