National Honey Day

 

This Saturday is National Honey Bee Day. Honey bees are really important to our environment. They pollinate most of our crops – the things you eat. Here in California the farmers rent bees every spring to pollinate almonds, peaches, cherries, and a lot of other fruits.  

Almost all honey bees you see on flowers are female worker bees. They only live 5-6 weeks. Throughout their short life they have different jobs as they get older. They start out helping in the hive feeding baby bees (larva) making new cells, fanning their wings to keep the hive cool, and taking care of the queen. After a couple weeks they go out as hunter/gatherers. They look for new patches of flowers and report back to the hive. They do a little dance that tells everyone where to find them, and how far away the flowers are. Once the other bees have all the information they need, the hurry to the flower to collect as much sweet flower nectar as they can. They also collect pollen in special sacs on their legs. Both the pollen and the nectar become food for the colony. Everybody shares. Wow, what good bees they are! Some of the nectar is turned into honey so they have enough to eat in the winter. This is where we get our honey from.

Another important bee is the Queen. She stays home and runs the hive while laying lots of eggs that will grow into new worker bees. She is the queen because she eats food called royal jelly. The male is called a drone. Drones are only around during the spring. They don’t live very long.

Honey is the sweet, golden, stick stuff that bee keepers harvest in the fall. They don’t take it all so the bees have enough to live through the winter. It has different tastes, depending on what kind of flower the nectar comes from. Most honey in the store is clover honey. To get the best tasting honey, look for local honey at farmers markets or from local bee keepers. It’s the freshest and tastes so yummy!

Just be sure to not eat it all at one time.
Too much honey might give you a tummy ache. Also, you might end up like Pooh Bear and run out! Always save some for others.

"Bears love honey and I'm a Pooh bear
So I do care, so I'll climb there
I'm so rumbly in my tumbly
A time for something sweet"

(The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh)

Hope you like our bee talk!

Love Papaw.