Honeybees & Me

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The Only Acceptable Way To Serve Sweet Potatoes

If you mash them, we are not friends. Get the full Thanksgiving menu here.

Planning your Thanksgiving Day menu? This simple recipe is absolutely delicious - rosemary roasted sweet potatoes with honey butter. It's easy to make ahead of time and just reheat for 5-10 minutes before serving, so you save on critical oven space.

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(via The Best Pollinators and How You Can Help Them With One Simple Step) 

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As a beekeeper, gratitude is concept I fully embrace as working with living creatures teaches one to be humble. Here are three lessons about gratitude honey bees have taught me that are especially relevant at Thanksgiving time: strive for unity, teach the young, open one's heart.

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How do you know you’re buying real honey? If you’re not purchasing it directly from a beekeeper, it may be overwhelming to decide between the different brands and varietals available on the market. It has been estimated that almost three-fourths of honey on sale at some US grocery stores, discount clubs and big box retailers is not actually honey. Fortunately, there are four easy tests that can be done at home to reassure yourself that the product you bought is really honey.

How do you know you’re buying real honey? If you’re not purchasing it directly from a beekeeper, it may be overwhelming to decide between the different brands and varietals available on the market. It has been estimated that almost three-fourths of honey on sale at some US grocery stores, discount clubs and big box retailers is not actually honey. It’s a processed product that has been stripped of pollen, nutrients, enzymes, and vitamins. What’s left in the jar is just sweetened syrup. Alarmingly, some manufacturers even add artificial sweeteners and corn syrup to make the “honey” cheaper by diluting the original product. There’s also the risk that you may be buying adulterated honey containing pesticides, antibiotics and other contaminants that was imported illegally from China.

Fortunately, there are four easy tests that can be done at home to reassure yourself that the product you bought is really honey. Furthermore, make sure to read the label about where the honey came from and not where it was bottled at—as unscrupulous producers try to mislead consumers by claiming their honey was bottled in the United States and not mentioning where it was originally obtained. There are a lot of wonderful honeys from all around the world and buying these boutique brands at specialty shops and gourmet online retailers is not a problem. Just know the source and you’ll be fine.

How to Tell the Difference Between Real and Fake Honey:

The Crystallization Test

As honey is made from nectar, bees process it and infuse it with special enzymes. One of these enzymes, glucose oxidase, helps to remove any water from the honey. The result of this process is that natural honey has a tendency to crystallize and become thicker when stored. Artificial honey will not.

The Water Test

Real honey doesn’t mix readily with water. Just drop a teaspoon into a glass of water and you’ll see that it settles at the bottom of your container. To incorporate it into the liquid, real honey needs to be stirred. Fake honey, on the other hand, easily dissolves in water without even mixing.

The Paper Test

Place a few drops of the sample you are testing on a paper towel or napkin. If the honey is pure, it will remain solid and not soak through. If the honey is impure, it will wet the paper and maybe even soak through it.

The Microwave Test

Add about 2 tablespoons of your sample to a microwave-safe bowl and heat on high power for 45 to 60 seconds. Natural honey will caramelize quickly while artificial honey will become foamy and bubbly.

The Bread Test

Spread your sample on a slice of bread. If it is genuine honey, the bread will become crunchy on top within a couple of minutes. If the honey is counterfeit, the bread will become soggy (because of its different moisture content).

Take a bite of the real stuff and enjoy…it passed the test!

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Tiny microsensors help track honey bee movements in an effort to understand their behavior and what factors might be impacting their survival.

It’s not only school children wearing backpacks these days; an international team of researchers is equipping honey bees with tiny RFID backpacks.  Led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) of Australia, the Global Initiative for Honeybee Health is investigating the global decline of honey bee populations by outfitting insects with these miniature high-tech backpacks.

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Beekeepers must maintain a calm and measured approach to tending their charges–one can’t rush through the maintenance and care of bees—else the hive will become agitated. Agitated bees are more likely to sting and while I’ve been stung before, it is something I hope to avoid.

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Ever wondered exactly where honey comes from? How the bees make it? I have the answer for you and no, it is not by magical fairies.

While technically honey can blithely be described as bee vomit...there’s a lot of biochemistry that takes place in addition to just plain old-fashioned hard work on part of the industrious honey bee in order to make honey for your honey jar.

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Over a period of 140 million years, flowering plants and pollinators have co-evolved to create a process of pollination that ultimately sustains all life on the planet. While pollination may appear to be just a simple transfer of pollen grains from one flower to another, it is in reality an interlocking puzzle of specificity and adhesion.

Honey bees are the most important pollinators because they are the only insects that actively interact with the pollen, consistently forage in the same area around the hive, and only visit a single type of flower on a foraging trip. These behaviors help to ensure that pollen is efficiently and accurately transferred to the appropriate flower species. For pollinators that are generalists—like honey bees—they can visit up to 1,000 flowers per day. Their hairy bodies are perfectly constructed to trap pollen grains.

The mechanism by which these pollen grains detach themselves from the bee and interact with a flower’s stigma with exquisite specificity has inspired the fabrication of a novel class of bio-inspired adhesive materials. Researchers have created magnetic replicas of sunflower pollen grains, which have a spiky outer surface. This “artificial pollen” has the natural sticky properties of the sunflower pollen and is augmented by the power of magnetism. It can then be modified to adhere to specific surfaces—creating high performance coatings for the aircraft and automotive industries.

Pollination is also vital to ensuring a nutritious and diverse food supply for people. Nearly all fruit and grain crops require pollination in order to produce a harvestable crop. With the exception of canola, corn and wind, which are self-pollinated—150 other foodstuffs in the United States require help from pollinators. These crops include apples, alfalfa, almonds, blueberries, cranberries, kiwis, melons, pears, plums, and squashes. Beyond providing human sustenance, pollination by honey bees is critically important to maintaining a robust and balanced ecosystem. So when spring arrives this month, it may be of some small comfort to realize what else pollen can do besides cause allergies!

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A bee’s brain has about one million neurons – compared to the 90 billion neurons in a human’s brain. For a long time, animal behaviorists thought it was the power of the hive that led to bees’ impressive feats and that a single bee really wasn’t that bright. That thinking has begun to change and now some scientists believe that an individual bee’s mental abilities may be on par or exceed that of many mammals.

Good Communicators

Bees communicate with one another through a complex series of movements called the “waggle dance.” They use this sophisticated form of communication to tell one another where to find nectar and pollen. Discovered during the early part of the 20th century by Karl von Frisch, an Austrian scientist, it was our first clue that bees may actually be capable of what we would describe as “having thoughts.”

Art Critics

Bees have been shown to be able to distinguish between two different styles of art. When bees had to differentiate between paintings by Monet and Picasso in order to receive a sweet reward, the bees unerringly identified the correct one. When the experiment was repeated using black and white versions of the paintings (to eliminate any preferences the bees might have for color), the results were the same.

Math Geniuses

Remarkably, it appears that bees can count – at least up to the number four. When bees had to fly by a specific number of markers in a tunnel to get to a food reward, they could readily do so even when the markers where moved around or presented in different shapes or colors. It appears that bees can bee taught, to some extent, the ability to recognize symbols representing numbers and also to understand the numbers that these symbols represent.

Flexible Learners

Like any good student, bees can combine things they have learned in one situation and apply them to a new situation. For instance, after learning to recognize abstract shapes that function as guideposts in a maze, bees have the capability of realizing that these shapes may mean different things in a new maze.

Sentient Beings

And most amazingly, new research suggests that bees have “metacognition,” which is the awareness of one’s own thought processes. In a set of experiments, bees were faced with the task of choosing between landing on a spot above a black bar or a spot below it. Depending upon where they landed, they would either receive a sweet or bitter drink. They were also given the option of avoiding the task if they weren’t sure they would succeed. Scientists found that bees opted out of the task when it was difficult to make the right decision and performed it when a positive outcome was assured. These experiments suggest that bees use probability to guide their decision making process, which is considered a basic tenet of metacognition.

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Cold and blustery winter air can leave one’s skin dry, chapped and itchy. If you’re looking for an all-natural ingredient to use that will banish these symptoms, honey is a wonderfully effective hydrator. It works by first attracting water to your skin cells and then sealing in the badly needed moisture. Because it is also chock full of antioxidants it is also good for pampering aging skin. Its antibacterial properties make it surprisingly effective at treating and preventing skin blemishes such as acne. Honey also helps to clarify skin by opening and unclogging pores.

4 Ways Honey Can Help Heal Your Skin

Blemish-Fighting: Honey’s naturally antibacterial properties help treat and prevent acne

Age Reversing: Full of antioxidants, honey can help older skin look and feel healthier

Complexion Boost: Honey’s moisturizing ability imparts a glow to complexions

Healthy Pores: Honey can purify and calm skin as it helps to unclog pores  

Below are two very simple Do It Yourself skin care recipes to help baby your skin this winter.

 Simple Honey Mask

This couldn’t be easier…just apply a thin layer of honey to freshly washed skin using a circular motion. Leave the honey on for at least 15 minutes. To easily remove the honey, apply a small amount of coconut oil to the top of it and gently massage it into the skin. The oil will aid in the honey’s removal and add another layer of moisturizing. Rinse with lukewarm water. Skin will feel softer and more hydrated.

 Gentle Honey Exfoliator

Use honey to help exfoliate your skin once a week during winter to remove dry, flaky skin cells. Mix two parts honey with one part baking soda. Apply to face and gently massage into skin before rinsing off with cool water. This recipe, while designed to be mild enough for the tender skin of the face is also quite effective on arms, legs and feet. Skin will be smoother and less itchy.

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As a child I thought honey was ‘just honey’ and it came in a squeezable honey bear bottle from the grocery store. As a beekeeper, I have learned that ‘honey’ encompasses a diverse collection of flavors and aromas. This diversity is due to the floral source(s) that the bees visit, the area’s climatic conditions, its geographical location and other variable factors. For example, varietal honeys like Bee America’s Orange Blossom or Tupelo have characteristic flavors that are fairly consistent over time. However, how these honeys taste from year to year actually varies according to the intensity of the bloom and how frequently the bees were able to visit the flowers.

Until now, it has been difficult to describe all the nuanced flavors of honey as there was not a standard vocabulary in place. Thanks to researchers at the Honey and Pollination Center at the University of California-Davis, such a tool now exists. It is called the Honey Flavor Wheel and it contains almost 100 unique descriptors that were identified by trained tasters, beekeepers, food enthusiasts, and a sensory scientist. Aside from the more ubiquitous floral and fruity flavors like ‘honeysuckle’ and ‘orange’, there are some delightful descriptions like a confectionary ‘crème brûlée’ and ‘cotton candy’.

There are also some more savory flavors like a nutty ‘chestnut’ or a yeasty ‘baked bread’. And showing their sense of humor, there are some flavors that seem more like kitchen accidents: a microbiological ‘moldy’ and a woody ‘burnt toast’ as well as unsavory places you wouldn’t want to eat any food, much less honey: an animal-smelling ‘barnyard’ or ‘locker room’. According to the Honey and Pollination Center’s website, “Our goal is to help consumers come to understand what makes each honey unique”.

Looking for a gift for someone who enjoys honey, loves gourmet food, appreciates a scientific take on life, or just has everything? Consider giving them the Honey Flavor Wheel, which will help him or her describe any type of honey and have fun doing so. The Center claims that “The Wheel will help them understand what they prefer and to help them give words to that experience.”

The front of the Honey Flavor Wheel displays all the descriptors grouped by color for ease of identification. When tasting honey, it is now no longer acceptable to say it is “sweet” when you can opine with great authority using the wheel, “It has hints of caramel with a underlying mild vanilla confectionary taste with a smooth finish.” Or, “I can taste a herbaceous top note of fresh eucalyptus with a strong undercurrent of spicy black pepper, which is complimented by an astringent texture with a lingering finish.” The back of the Honey Flavor Wheel explains how to properly taste and enjoy honey. It also features four honey profiles as examples of how to use the wheel along with terms to describe honey’s different textures and finishes.

The Honey Flavor Wheel, measuring 8.25 inches, sells for $10 each with all proceeds supporting bee health research at UCD.

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In our house, honey is king, or I should say queen given that it comes from our beloved bees. People sometimes ask me whether honey is better for them than granulated sugar, and I have to tell them that, “Sugar is sugar and honey is mostly sugar.” However, if you are deciding whether to stir in a teaspoon of honey or white sugar into your tea; make pumpkin bread with a cup of honey or white sugar; or drizzle honey or sprinkle white sugar over cereal—chose the honey.

The reason is that from a health perspective, honey is the smarter choice. Honey has a more sophisticated sugar profile than granulated sugar. The more complex the carbohydrates are in the food you consume, the more work your body exerts to break them down. To put it simply, you expend more energy (i.e., calories) digesting honey than white sugar. White sugar is about one-half glucose and one-half fructose and your body can readily break these types of sugars down, which can lead to rapid spikes in blood glucose levels. What fuel isn’t used immediately by your body gets stored as…you guessed it—fat.

In contrast, honey has much lower levels of both glucose and fructose and contains many other types of sugars.  It also is composed of dextrin, which is a type of starchy fiber, and protein. This nutritional mix makes honey more “energy-intensive” to digest and therefore, your body ends up storing less honey calories upon consumption.

And that’s not all the good news. Honey has micronutrients that the bees pick-up from the nectar they collect, which provide trace elements and vitamins that your body needs to stay healthy. These micronutrients vary by the source, making each honey’s nutritional profile unique. They give honey its distinctive terroir that reflects the time and the place the flowers grew. What could be sweeter?

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While bees are best known for making honey, scientists studying their brains and behavior have uncovered some astounding feats of biology. Bees have a lot to teach us and what we learn from them may someday help slow down the aging process, cure addictions and troubleshoot some very real human problems.

Bees’ Brains Can Halt the Aging Process

When older bees are tasked to do jobs typically performed by younger bees, their brains not only stop aging, but also had a greater ability to learn new things. Additionally, the brains of these older bees produced proteins only seen in the brains of younger bees. The human counterparts of these proteins have been shown to be protective against dementia and cellular stressors. Scientists hope that this discovery can help people maintain optimal brain functioning even in later life.

Bees Have the Ability to Recognize Human Faces

Bees make out faces the same way people do. They take the distinct elements of a face—eyebrows, lips, nose, etc.—and put them together like a three dimensional puzzle to make a recognizable face. Scientists call this technique configular processing. As a bee’s brain has only 1 million neurons compared to a human’s 10 billion, it is clear that it does not take a complex neural network to distinguish objects. This realization could prove useful in helping design more dependable facial recognition software and security measures at airports, for instance.

A Bee’s Brain Chemistry Changes When They Perform a New Task

Some bees are pre-programmed to do certain jobs in the hive. For instance, scout bees leave the hive to find new sources of food and share that information with the forager bees. Soldier bees, which are larger and stronger than regular bees, protect the colony. Undertaker bees remove dead and dying bees, which might spread disease, from the hive. Before a regular honeybee begins one of the many different jobs she will perform over the course of her lifetime, her brain’s chemistry becomes altered, which results in a specific set of behaviors that enables her to perform her new job.  This research could help scientists better understand how humans learn new skills and abilities.

Bees Get Buzzed from Caffeine

Some plants produce caffeine, which protects the plant from harmful insects and attracts pollinators like bees. Scientists have learned that nectar, which contains traces of caffeine, can actually help bees remember the location of that specific flower. This enhanced memory works in the plant’s favor as it increases the chance more bees will come to pollinate it. Understanding how such mind-altering substances change a bee’s behavior may give us insights on how to stop a human’s brain from reacting to drug abuse.

How Bees Gather Nectar May Help Police Catch Criminals

Astonishingly, scientists have found critical similarities between how bees gather nectar and how serial killers target their victims. Typically, serial killers commit their crimes close to where they live, but not close enough to arouse the neighbors’ suspicions. Similarly, bees gather nectar from locations that are near their hive, but are far enough away that parasites and predators will be unable to locate the hive. This optimal distance is known as a geographical buffer zone. By studying bee foraging patterns, scientists can generate computer programs that have the potential to shed light on how criminals stalk their victims. 

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Let's Celebrate Honey!

September is National Honey Month and it’s the perfect time of year to honor it in all of its golden glory after just finishing our own bountiful harvest season at Bee America. While honey is not created by magic, its very existence is the result of a certainly remarkable process. As children are more likely to believe in magic than adults, they would not have any trouble having faith in the following equation:

Beautiful Flowers + Industrious Bees = Delicious Honey

How wonderful for us that nectar from flowers can actually be transformed by honey bees into Nature’s own sweetener. While nectar, which is honey’s raw ingredient, is made up of about 70% water, honey itself is only 17% water. How is that possible you may ask?  It is the bees that tirelessly work to remove the excess moisture from the nectar by rapidly fanning their wings over the open cells in the hive where it is stored.

A master beekeeper friend of mine once explained to me that our role as beekeepers is to get out of the way and let the bees produce one of Nature’s most amazing gifts. It doesn’t spoil, doesn’t need refrigeration, and it is just so good for you. Honey is one of the safest foods as most harmful bacteria cannot live in it for any length of time. I love the taste of honey—how each taste—each batch is subtly different. It is a reflection of the flowers from which it is produced, interpreted by the bees to make a unique and wonderful food.  

While some honey can be almost white in color, it is usually in shades of light amber (the mildest in flavor) to dark brown (the more robust in flavor). But honey’s many uses do not stop at the dinner table. It is so much more! It can be used in countless applications that fall under the general categories of healing and repairing the body, beautifying and pampering oneself and improving one’s fitness level.

In honor of National Honey Month, here are five surprising honey bee facts:

·      A honey bee can fly up to 15 mph and beats its wings 12,000 beats per minute.

·      In her lifetime, a worker bee collects nectar that will make only 1/10th of a teaspoon of honey.

·      It requires the dedicated efforts of approximately 1,000 worker bees to create one pound of honey.

·      Bees fly the equivalent of more than twice around the earth to gather nectar that will make a pound of honey.

·      The average lifespan of a honey bee during the nectar-gathering season is about six weeks.

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Eco-friendly, by definition, means earth-friendly or not harmful to the environment. The term is typically used in the context of products and practices that help conserve critical resources like water and energy, thereby contributing to “green-living”. Adopting an eco-friendly lifestyle or running an eco-friendly business like Bee America also helps to mitigate polluting our air, water and land. But what is often overlooked in the equation is that eco-friendly is not only good for our planet, it is good for ourselves as well.

Part of an eco-friendly lifestyle should include how you take care of your garden or yard. Natural pest control is healthier for your family, the wildlife that shelters and/or lives in your garden, and the environment in general. It also has the added benefit of being less costly than purchasing pesticides or hiring a lawn service to apply them.

Astonishingly, homeowners use about three times the quantity of pesticides as do farmers, which amounts to approximately 136 million pounds of pesticides a year for residential use alone in North America. In fact, residential use of pesticides is primarily responsible for most surface water contamination and the majority of animal poisonings—both from pesticides.

The most straightforward means of averting insect damage to your garden is to deter an infestation of bugs in the first place and the best way to do that is to grow a healthy garden. Below is a list of some of the practices that we employ at Bee America to keep our gardens healthy for our honey bees and for our family. They’re relatively simple to implement and you should see almost immediate results with most of them.

• Eliminate weak vegetation as it will attract insect predators. Pull out the sick or infected plant and dispose of it far away from your garden.

• Establish healthy, organic soil by using natural composting methods, mulching and top-dressing your soil with compost or natural fertilizer.

• Strengthen your plants by using seaweed fertilizer. Seaweed contains trace elements that promote healthy development and disease resistance in plants. It also repels slugs, which is an added bonus.

• Reduce your garden’s attractiveness to insects by removing yard waste, debris and weeds, which are breeding grounds for insects.

• Keep leaves dry by watering early in the morning so that the foliage will be dry for the majority of the day. Wet foliage encourages insect and fungal damage to your plants.

• Clean your gardening implements to prevent the spread of insects from potentially infected to non-infected plant as you move to work in different areas of the garden.

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Midsummer is a perfect time to help your neighborhood pollinators. When blossoms start to fade and heat and humidity make gardens look more like a parched desert than a lush oasis…there’s several things you can do around your home to help out bees, butterflies and other pollinators:

1.    Avoid the use of insecticides and use natural pest control instead (i.e., prevention, beneficial insects and nontoxic remedies)

2.    Consider letting certain parts of your yard "go wild" and return to their natural state as they can support more ecosystem diversity

3.    Keep your garden well-watered so its flowers produce more nectar (provided you are not under drought restrictions)

4.    Cut your grass less frequently so that pollinator-friendly plants like daisies, clover and other wildflowers can grow up and bloom

5.    Shelter pollinators in your yard by installing bat houses and bee nests

6.    If feasible, leave dead tree trunks alone as homes for wood-nesting bees

7.    Insure a fresh water supply—leave out a shallow bowl filled with water and floating wine corks or river stones for pollinators to safely land on to drink

Share this information with your neighbors and friends. By supporting pollinators, we'll make a real difference in the health of our environment. And with winter still many months away, we have time to enjoy a garden full of flowers, fruits and vegetables and the wonderful creatures that help them thrive.

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For countless centuries, honey has been used to treat a variety of afflictions and conditions. It can be ingested as a treatment for coughs, allergies and other ailments or it can be applied directly to the skin as balm for healing rashes, burns and cuts. Honey is at its most potent in its natural state, i.e., “raw”, which means that it is not pasteurized. Raw honey has the substantial benefit of being chock full of active vitamins and minerals, powerful antioxidants and beneficial enzymes.

Amazingly, raw honey is incredibly powerful: it has anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal super powers. It can fortify the immune system, alleviate allergies and promote digestive health. Honey has a proven clinical ability to treat serious skin injuries and infections. Raw honey has also been used to regulate blood pressure, control sugar levels in the body and lessen ulcer inflammation.

A single teaspoon of honey makes an effective expectorant for treating respiratory conditions. Local honey can help relieve seasonal allergies because it contains small amounts of antigens from the pollen that are ubiquitous to a specific geographical area.

Here are five simple ways to improve your health naturally by using honey:

1. Treat Skin Injuries

Honey dressings haven been shown to be an effective antiseptic for treating burns, scrapes, incisions and ulcers. When honey comes in to contact with a wound, hydrogen peroxide is slowly produced, which generates antibacterial activity that does not damage body tissues.

Tip: Spread the honey on a dressing and apply this to the wound rather than applying the honey directly to the wound.

2. Relieve Itches from Bug Bites

Honey's anti-inflammatory properties make it ideal for soothing the itch and redness caused by insect bites, particularly mosquitos. Because honey has the added benefit of being anti-microbial, it can also help prevent infection.

Tip: Use a Q-tip and take a small amount of honey and apply it directly to the bite.

3. Boost Your Immune System

Honey contains polyphenols, which are antioxidants that prevent cells from suffering from free radical damage. Many epidemiological studies have shown that regular intake of phenolic compounds is associated with the reduced risk of heart disease.

Tip: To enhance your immune system’s performance, add one to two tablespoons of honey to your tea or a mug of warm water on a daily basis.

4. Improve Your Digestion

Individuals who suffer from indigestion will find relief from the antiseptic properties of honey, which help reduce stomach acidity. Honey can also neutralize gas and help soothe overextended stomachs.

Tip: Ingest one or two tablespoons of honey before rich meals or if you’ve already overeaten, drink a cup of warm water and honey to help aid digestion.

5. Pamper Your Skin

Honey is the ultimate skin care secret…its anti-microbial and antifungal help protect skin. And, honey has the ability to absorb and retain moisture, which helps to keep the skin well hydrated and dewy looking.

Tip: Apply a dab of raw, organic honey directly to blemishes and let the skin absorb its medicinal properties while you sleep.