The Amazing & Vanishing Honeybee

Why do we sing their life song now? The ancients worshiped the bee, sang songs to them, made beautiful and complex gold jewelery in their image. Who are we to allow them to disappear without making songs to their magnificence?

Yes, friends - as many have now pointed out - not only honey lovers - but almond lovers, cheese lovers - your foods are at stake here, in fact - perhaps your own very life is too! The bees brings us agriculture as we know it. They also may bee a significator of the collapse of our ecosystem in these times - an early victim of the complex immune destroying lifestyle we have come to accept and yet (almost) be oblivious of.

What can we do to save the bees?

And why do we care? Just a few facts-

*Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans. What a gift! What have we done for them?

*Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees! They live as if they are cells of one organism, very socially sophisticated…we humans could learn something from their high degree of cooperation, sharing and dancing communications!

*During honey production periods, a bee’s life span is about 6 weeks. In the winter, they live longer because they don’t get worn out by flying.

*Honeybees visit about 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey. They also bring in their weight in pollen if they find it!

*A bee travels an average of 1600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey; up to 6 miles per trip. To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth. Next time you wrap that spoonful of golden honey around to save everry drop, be reminded of how much loving work and air time created that honey!

*Bees fly an average of 13-15 mph. Maybe we can learn from them how to move at a rate of speed that brings rewards and health.

*Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day. One single bee usually visits between 50-1000 flowers a day, but can visit up to several thousand.

*Queens will lay almost 2000 eggs a day at a rate of 5 or 6 a minute. Between 175,000-200,000 eggs are laid per year.

*About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce 1 pound of beeswax.

Beegin to keep a hive of bees. For one thing, it will slow you down to bee in their presence. They hum a mysterious and ancient song, and draw you into watching their daily activities at the hive entrance. Their flight arrivals and departures are way more interesting than anything at the airport! Besides, you may bee helping to save these precious and social creatures. My hives are deep in the rural mountains of Mendocino County. As far as I know, there is no commercial agricultural spraying done anywhere nearby ( They fly up to 5 miles to find nectar) and no weird cell phone towers, or other concentrated electromagnetic pollution to cause their immediate distress. I am hoping that a colony collapse and mite-resistant strain of bees can develop in our area. Check out your local beekeeping group!! I started one as it appeared that we needed to get together. Turns out that almost 40 people in our sparsely populated area keep bees or want to have bees!

There have been a few good movies lately - coming around to educate us and interest us in bees…including the newest - The Vanishing Bees. See a fabulous trailer at their website - http://www.vanishingbees.com/

You can even play games about bees… learn about how to keep bees, or enjoy using local honey in special ways. Bee kind to our pollinators, they are our benefactors in so many ways.