Honey is a versatile commodity. The natural sweetener goes with everything from teas, coffees and meats, and veggies. It is also a powerful tool for conservation, benefiting the ecosystems alike.
Conventional honey production can stress bee colonies because sometimes new beekeepers use oversized hives. Newbies think this will help the bees produce more honey, it is just the opposite. This practice stresses the little pollinators out totally. Once stressed, as in humans one can become more prone to illness and for bees more susceptible to related diseases of the bees. When colonies are under stress, the young bees must forage before they are ready to, which can cause physical changes to their beautiful brains and lessens their ability to learn properly how to forage correctly, new scents and will not develop correctly. This leaves the hive very vulnerable to threats outside of the hive and puts pressure on the older adult bees.
New beekeepers need to know the fundamentals of proper beekeeping. These fundamentals are regarding the size of the hive boxes, when to put on a new hive box, and when to keep them completely downsized. They also need to know how much honey can be extracted and how much to leave in the hive so the bees will thrive during slower seasons and winter.
Powerful Pollinators
Honey bees help other plants grow because they’re important pollinators for fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Plants are able to grow seeds and fruits because the bees transfer pollen between them.
Honey bees living in hives are either the queen, workers or drones. One queen runs the entire hive, laying the eggs that produce the next generation of bees in the hive. What a great idea the bees know who is the boss… yep the Queen!!!!!!
A drone is a male bee that is the product of an unfertilized egg. Drones have bigger eyes and lack stingers. They cannot help defend the hive and they do not have the body parts to collect pollen or nectar, so they cannot contribute to feeding the community. The drone’s only job is to mate with the queen. Eventually, they will be killed. They are good for procreation only!
Flying Fast
Honey bees fly at 15 miles per hour. While flying, they beat their wings an astonishing 200 times per second.
Bees have a really strong sense of smell, which they use to communicate with each other within the hive. Every bee has 170 odorant receptors.
A Short and Sweet Life
The average worker bee will produce about 1/12 teaspoon of honey during its lifetime. A worker bee’s life usually lasts about five to six weeks.
Busy Bee
The queen is busiest in the summer when she lays up to 2,500 eggs per day. She can live as many as five years.
Colony Collapse
Colonies of bees have disappeared over the last 15 years for unknown reasons. This “colony collapse disorder” shows that as many as 90 percent of bees have disappeared, never to return, states National Geographic…. STRESS, INSECTICIDES, UNEDUCATED BEEKEEPERS ARE KILLING OUR HONEYBEES, AND REMEMBER WITHOUT THEM THERE IS NO US, NO EARTH, WITHOUT OUR POLLINATORS, TO POLLINATE OUR CROPS, FRUIT TREES, ALL OF OUR FOOD SOURCES.
How long would humans survive without bees?
Bees also provide food for some bird species, so if a cataclysmic event sent all our bees into a rapture, the aftershocks would ripple up the food chain.
If bees disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live. The line is usually attributed to Einstein, and it seems plausible enough. After all, Einstein knew a lot about science and nature, and bees help us produce food.
“BEE KIND AND PROTECT OUR POLLINATORS ALL OF THEM” Tia
Unfortunately, that rapture may becoming. While incidences of colony collapse disorder—or entire hives being wiped out overnight. We are losing thousands of colonies per year. ACShilton2017
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