Last week, in a completely uncoordinated fashion, a theme emerged in my birthday gifts where separate people all got me something related to honey and bees. I do love bees, but it got me to thinking about these beautiful little creatures and what they’ve meant to us and to history.
You’ve probably heard a fair amount about them in recent years due to things like Colony Collapse Disorder and reminders in the media about just how important they are for pollinating things like our food. But they are so much more and have a very long history.
Prehistoric cave paintings in Spain that are thousands of years old give us our first pictorial documents of beekeeping. Surviving papyrus scrolls give details about the ancient Egyptian uses of honey for all sorts of medical ailments and injuries. Many cultures, including my Vikings(!), have fermented honey to make the drink Mead. Prior to the introduction of cane sugar to many parts of the world, honey was a primary sweetener. And it’s not just the honey, but the beeswax as well was heavily utilized for various purposes not the least of which was making candles for light prior to the invention of the electric light bulb. It was preferred because of its sweet smell and the way it burned much cleaner than candles made from animal fat.
Even today, the honey and wax have many important uses. We still use the candles as you can see from one of my gifts in the photo above. And honey is not only an excellent sweetener, but it contains enzymes that are good for your gut and can also help boost your immune system to combat seasonal allergies.
There are many types of bees, but the one we are most familiar with in my neck of the woods is the European Honey Bee. It is not native to North America, but made its way as stowaways during the period of European expansion into the “New World” 500 years ago.
This is the bee we have kept both in our back yard garden and on our farm for years. In addition to providing honey and pollinating flowers, fruits, and vegetables, they are remarkable for their role as a “beneficial insect” in all sorts of farming, including even our Christmas trees.
How, you may ask, can they help Christmas trees?? Well, if you’re unlucky enough to get aphids in your trees, you’ll know that just like other creatures, aphids poop. It’s a sticky residue that can damage the trees and make them aesthetically dirty. No one wants a poopy, dirty Christmas tree, so the bees come to the rescue! They are attracted to the sticky residue and eat it up, cleaning the tree. They also keep the aphids contained so that other beneficial insects like ladybugs can come in an eat them. The bees are part of an ecosystem that we encourage and rely on so that we do not have to use insecticides in our farming practices. We have our own personal hives at our farm and also those of a seasonal professional beekeeper. We also release ladybugs into the wild for assisting the bees in aphid control. If you just let it and work with it, nature finds its own balance, and the humble little bees are an integral part of that system.
Each of the hives is comprised of the queen who lays the eggs to make new bees, the drones who are the males who mate with the queen (or so they hope), and — the vast majority of the hive — the all-female workforce that gathers the nectar and pollen they all need to survive. It’s a matriarchy! You go girls.
But in all seriousness, we need the bees for a healthy world. They are these tiny little miracles of nature. Sure, they can sting you, but they really don’t want to as it’s a death sentence for them. They can only sting once and if they do, they die (at least the honey bee variety — wasps, however, are another matter). What they really want is to be left alone to do their thing, namely tend to the survival of their hive.
Sometimes we use the term “hive mind” to refer to someone or some group in a negative way, as in they aren’t individual enough to think for themselves. But the bees’ communal nature actually has a lot to teach us about how to work hard and care for each other because they can’t go it alone. And neither can we. We need each other.
So, next time you see a honey bee, say a little “thank you.” They are strong, yet delicate. Heroic, yet humble. They are grace in flight.
Oh thanks! Now I feel a drive to make mead again.
/jk