Bee Informed

Bee Informed

  • Much of the "technology" involved in beekeeping is the same today as it was nearly a century ago.

  • Honey from certain flowers (almond blossoms, for instance) tastes awful. The bees don't care—nectar is nectar to a bee. But beekeepers who want delicious honey are very careful about where they place their hives.

  • Some states have laws regulating how close one beekeeper's hives can be to another’s. Other states don't. Either way, a good hive location (or "yard") is a secret as closely guarded as a fruitful fishing spot.

  • Honey can be traced back to its source by analyzing the pollen it contains. Many large producers filter their honey to make it less likely to crystallize, a process that removes the pollen, making it impossible to track where the honey came from. Our honey retains its pollen, the signature of its origins in California, Montana or Hawaii. So that’s why crystallization in our honey is completely normal.

  • Tightly sealed, honey can last pretty much forever on your pantry shelf. Pots of honey thousands of years old have been discovered in Egyptian tombs, still edible.

  • The unique combination that gives honey its immortality on the shelf—a low-moisture, high-acid environment that bacteria cannot grow in—has been used since ancient times to protect wounds from infection.

  • Americans consume more than 400 million pounds of honey each year.

  • Through pollination, honeybees help to produce roughly one-third of the food Americans eat.

  • Each worker bee produces an average of 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey.

  • In her six- to eight-week lifespan, a worker bee will log enough flight miles to circumnavigate the globe 1.5 times.

  • Beekeeping to produce honey dates back to 700 B.C.

  • In any given colony, there are 20,000 – 40,000 worker bees (infertile females) for each queen.

  • Worker bees fan the honey with their wings to remove moisture and concentrate the sugars so it won't ferment or spoil once sealed in the waxy honeycomb.

  • "Heater bees" vibrate their bodies to raise the temperature inside the hive in the winter. With enough food, they can keep the hive at a toasty 90 degrees Fahrenheit!

  • In Africa, birds called Honeyguides lead humans to wild bee nests. Once the humans harvest the honey, the birds eat the larvae and beeswax.

  • A productive female bee can lay 3,000 eggs in a day.





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