To get us in the mood for birds and bees, JanetF-B shared a video showing baby-rearing in a bluebird nesting box, produced by Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

Guest speaker Tara Chapman then energetically and passionately described her work in honeybee education and her honey production company, Two Hives Honey (www.twohiveshoney.com).

After explaining that the honeybee is not native to the Americas, she established a rationale for beekeeping by demonstrating how many supermarket vegetables and fruit depend upon honeybee pollination, and contrasted our needs to the commercial honey industry’s non-sustainable practices. For example, she described monoculture of almond orchards requiring beehives to be transported on trucks.

Knowing her audience, Tara championed the hard-working female bees that keep a hive going in a structured protocol of labor. She also described the honeybee life cycle and how honey is produced, as well as what is “good honey” and what is adulterated for consumers. Please see the list below for a few details.

  • 95% of the bee members in a honeybee hive are female
  • The caste system within a honeybee hive includes worker, queen, and drone
  • The worker bees advance through job positions from nurse, to architect, HVAC, bouncers, and foragers
  • 80% of our flowering crops depend on pollination
  • Other bees, native species, are actually more important to pollination than are honeybees
  • Colony Collapse Disorder is a term used to describe a hive that has abandoned its young
  • Persistent pesticides are suspected in causing CCD and disrupt the bees’ navigation systems
  • Mites, lack of wildflowers, and habitat loss through commercial practices also disrupt hives
  • Bees produce pheromones that engage other bees, such as when stinging, defending
  • Smoke masks the pheromones that arouse the bees so people can work with the hive
  • Bees have an elaborate dance that communicates to the other foragers in the hive where the flowers are
  • Drone bees are males that only serve to impregnate flying queens
  • In the lifetime of a honeybee she can be expected to produce 1/12-teaspoon of honey
  • If you buy honey that has crystalized, it is the “good stuff”
  • Dollar store honey may have high fructose corn syrup added to it

Marilyn