Written by Jackie DiBartolomeo

Mike Palmer searches for a queen bee with a partygoer July 19 in St. Albans.  Jackie DiBartolomeo

FRANKLIN COUNTY — In a sunny field just off Kellogg Road in St. Albans, a group of 25 stood wearing an assortment of nets and hats. In their hands and swirling in the air around them were hundreds of bees.

The group gathered Wednesday morning to celebrate local and world-renowned beekeeper Mike Palmer. After buying his first two packs of bees back in 1974, Palmer is now in his 50th year of beekeeping. Over the decades, Palmer has become known internationally for his beekeeping methods with his brood of over 1,000 bee colonies.

Instead of gathering in a party hall to celebrate Palmer’s accomplishments, the group of beekeepers gathered in the place they and Palmer love best: a grassy field surrounded by the little yellow creatures that brought them all together in the first place.

When Palmer pulled up to the field to find 25 people waiting for him instead of the usual four or five, he was surprised and overwhelmed by the support.

“It means everything,” Palmer said. “It doesn’t feel like 50 years.”

Stationed at the 30-some hives placed throughout the field, partygoers took to searching for queen bees among the sticky honey and the dozens of bees attached to each frame.

With each queen found, the beekeepers carried her over to Palmer. Holding the queen in his hand with ease, Palmer took a dot of red paint to label her and put her in her own box, a throne of sorts. Guests watched on with each queen Palmer labeled, admiring his deftness with the small creatures.

Of the 1,200-some queen bees Palmer raises every summer, he sells half of them to beekeepers nationwide.

“This is my favorite thing to do…it’s nice to make nice honey, but it’s so much nicer to make nice queens and to send them all over the country,” Palmer said. “People write back, they call me on the phone; that, to me, is the reward.”

Guests at the party ranged from beekeepers who have been involved in the practice for decades, to amateurs. Yet with one guest qualifying herself as an “amateur” with eight years of experience, it is clear that learning is never really over in the beekeeping world…..

To read the Complete article go to; Local beekeepers catch queens for famed St. Albans beekeeper Mike Palmer’s 50th anniversary | Local News | samessenger.com

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: Local beekeepers catch queens for famed St. Albans beekeeper Mike Palmer’s 50th anniversary | Local News | samessenger.com

The sweet stuff can help with burns, coughs, anxiety and more

By Alison Gwinn,

AARP

Photo by Daily Slowdown on Unsplash

Honey’s benefits have been touted since antiquity — and it turns out the ancient Greeks and Romans were onto something: Honey really can hit the sweet spot when it comes to our health.

Though honey — a sweet, sticky liquid made by honeybees from flower nectar — is technically a sugar, “it’s also really rich in a lot of different bioactive substances,” says Mayo Clinic registered dietitian (and hobbyist beekeeper) Joy Heimgartner. Those include a range of good-for-you minerals, probiotics, enzymes, antioxidants and other phytochemicals.

There are four common types of honey: Raw honey is defined by the National Honey Board as “honey as it exists in the beehive or as obtained by extraction, settling or straining without adding heat.” Manuka honey, produced from the flowers of manuka trees, is known for its unique antibacterial properties, attributed to a compound called methylglyoxal, says Jordan Hill, lead registered dietitian for Top Nutrition Coaching.

Organic honey is produced without the use of synthetic chemicals, pesticides or GMOs. And locally produced honey has been reported to provide relief from seasonal allergies to local pollen, though scientific evidence to support that claim is limited, says Hill.

According to Hill, honey can be substituted for sugar in recipes, but remember: It has a distinctive flavor (which varies depending on the source flowers); it’s sweeter than sugar (the general rule of thumb is to use ¾ to 1 cup of honey for every 1 cup of sugar); it’s a liquid, so you may need to cut back on other liquids or slightly increase the dry ingredients in a recipe; and it browns more quickly than sugar (so reduce the oven temperature by 25°F).

But whatever way you use honey — in a recipe or as a condiment — always keep in mind that it is a sweetener. “Honey is a supersaturated sugar solution, and we should limit added sugars of all types,” says Heimgartner. Still, “if you’re looking for a sweetener that has more to offer, honey is fantastic.” Here are six reasons why.

1. Honey doesn’t raise your blood sugar as rapidly as white sugar

“Honey is metabolized differently from white sugar and produces less of a sugar spike,” says registered dietitian and nutritionist Dawn Jackson Blatner, author of The Flexitarian Diet. “Research suggests that honey may enhance insulin sensitivity and may support the pancreas, the organ that produces insulin.” A 2018 review of preliminary studies points to honey’s “hypoglycemic effect” and use as a “novel antidiabetic agent that might be of potential significance for the management of diabetes and its complications.”

And a 2022 study out of the University of Toronto found that honey improves important measures of cardiometabolic health, including blood sugar, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, especially if the honey is raw and from a single source.

2. Honey can help with wound or burn therapy

“Honey has been used for wound healing for centuries, and certain types of honey, like medical-grade honey, have shown potential in wound management due to their antimicrobial properties and ability to promote healing,” says Hill, who nonetheless advises consulting health care professionals for appropriate wound care. Heimgartner, a board-certified oncology specialist, says, “There’s actually a lot of evidence that using honey during oral cancer radiation treatment helps to prevent some of the nasty side effects of mucositis,” or inflammation of the mouth.

How does it work? “Research suggests that honey prevents or controls the growth of bacteria on the wound, helps to slough off dead tissue and microorganisms, and transports oxygen and nutrients into a wound for quicker healing,” says Blatner.

Native plants and naturalistic perennials attract bees and other pollinators.

​Create Your Own Pollinator Garden

If you want to create your own pollinator garden for bees to forage in, consider these tips from Emily Erickson, postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, department of evolution and ecology.

• Opt for native plants or naturalistic perennials.
• Choose plants of varying colors, shapes and bloom times so you can support a variety of pollinators throughout the season.
• Avoid double-flowered varieties (those with extra petals) or plants that look drastically different from their wild relatives.
• Avoid pesticides.
• Leave areas in your yard that can serve as nesting habitats, such patches of bare soil, brush, twigs or woody stems, where many native pollinators make their homes.
• Which plants are right for you depends on your location and climate, so ask your local nursery for advice — or simply walk through a nursery and notice which plants seem to attract pollinators.

3. Honey is rich in polyphenols, including flavonoids

Why does that matter? Because those two substances have both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, meaning they protect our bodies against oxidative stress, which can manifest as cancer, heart disease or other diseases. But Hill cautions that the polyphenols in honeys can vary significantly, depending on the type of honey and its floral source.

4. Honey can be an effective cough suppressant

A 2020 meta-analysis found that honey provides a widely available and inexpensive alternative to antibiotics in controlling cough frequency and severity, though it concluded that further studies were needed. “It is believed that honey’s thick texture and possible antioxidant and antimicrobial properties may provide relief for cough symptoms,” Hill says, but she adds the caveat that honey should never be given to infants under 1 year of age due to a risk of botulism.

5. Honey may provide antidepressant or anti-anxiety benefits.

“Research suggests that polyphenol compounds in honey such as apigenin, caffeic acid, chrysin, ellagic acid and quercetin support a healthy nervous system, which may enhance memory and support mood,” says Blatner. Though more study is needed, a 2014 review of research says that one established nootropic (or cognitive-enhancing) property of honey “is that it assists the building and development of the entire central nervous system, particularly among newborn babies and preschool-age children, which leads to the improvement of memory and growth, a reduction of anxiety, and the enhancement of intellectual performance later in life.”

6. Honey may support a healthy gut

Early research indicates that “honey has an extra-special ability to support a healthy gut microbiome because it contains both probiotics, or good bacteria, and prebiotic properties, which help good bacteria thrive,” says Blatner, though the evidence is limited. A 2022 paper funded by the National Institute of Health, Malaysia, concluded that “honey bees and honey, which have the potential to be good sources of probiotics and prebiotics, need to be given greater attention and more in-depth research so they can be taken to the next level.”

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: https://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-2023/honey-health-benefits.html

• By HARLEIGH CUPP Daily News-Record

Barry Gibson, owner of Hannah Bee Apiary, inspects his hives.

A gentle humming filled the air surrounding 12 stacked wooden hives — some painted in pastel pink, blue and yellow — while Barry Gibson lifted the lids to peek in on his treasured honeybees.

Hannah Bees Apiary has a story as simple and sweet as the honey its more than 600,000 bees produce each year.

Gibson is a retired U.S. Navy corpsmen of more than 20 years that served on the front lines in Iraq during several different deployments. He peaked an interest in bees and read through several books about apiculture before having the opportunity to take free classes through Michigan State University as a serviceman.

His education certainly did not go to waste, as Gibson rattled off tidbits about the world of bees that he had grown so fascinated by.

He met Hannah Wills in 2019 and moved to their home in Harrisonburg the following year. Coincidentally, Wills father kept bees growing up and so she encouraged Gibson to start a few of his own in their backyard. He listened and what started as a hobby hive two years ago has grown into a vision for starting a small business.

Last month, Gibson received a $1,000 scholarship through a partnership of Tractor Supply Company and the Farmer Veteran Coalition that he had applied for earlier in the year. As one of 60 Veteran farmer honorees from across the nation, he plans to use the funds to construct a storage building for his beekeeping supplies — which are currently housed under the carport — and to expand his apiary to have hives in other locations.

Gibson’s real dream, he said, is to open a coffee shop as a place to display Hannah’s artwork and provide a space for veterans — and anyone else in the community — to gather and share “old war stories.” Honey is how he plans to get there.

“I didn’t start this to make a profit,” explained Gibson. “I have PTSD, and it helps me a lot just being up there [with my bees]. They have their own little world, and it’s soothing to me just to be up there.”

Get in touch with Hannah Bees Apiary and follow Gibson’s farm journey online through his new website at www.hannahbeesapiary.com.

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: https://www.dnronline.com/news/harrisonburg-veteran-wins-tractor-supply-grant-to-expand-apiary/article_7e9ae844-4d1f-56ba-a432-e92939d28057.html

A botanical survey at the end of May revealed more than 30 different plant species

By: Safia Samee Ali

Trinity College in Dublin Dave G Kelly/Getty

A rare Irish orchid was discovered on a Dublin college lawn after the school stopped cutting its grass as part of a “no mow” initiative to promote pollination and wildflower blooming.

A botany professor at Trinity College Dublin found the rare flower, called the broad-leaved helleborine, under a birch tree in one of the school’s sprawling lawns after it stopped mowing.

The find was significant, as the plant is never very common in any one place and is mostly found in woodlands, the college said in a statement.

“This is super exciting; it is a rare native Irish orchid,” Jenny McElwain, who found the flower, told The Irish Times. “If you looked, you would find it in most counties in Ireland, but you’d probably only find one, and it would pop up so infrequently. It might pop up once, and you wouldn’t see it again for 10 years, and three of them have popped up in the lawn.”

The environmental factors required to grow are rare to find, as the seeds of this orchid need the right fungal partner to germinate and grow for the first few weeks of its life.

“This one needs a perfect set of circumstances. If it finds the exact right fungal partner, it forms fungi around its roots,” McElwain said.

This “complex” environment would never have been discovered if the university hadn’t stopped mowing. After discovering the flower, the school extended the no mow period through June, during which time a second orchid species popped up, the college said.

A botanical survey of the lawns at the end of May revealed more than 30 different plant species flowering on the lawns, the college said.

McElwain said it’s not clear how the orchid seeds found their way to the school’s lawn, but guessed they may have been transported by birds, humans, or the wind.

“Or possibly, these orchids have simply been lying in wait, dormant in the soil for decades, waiting to be given a chance to grow.”

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: College Stops Mowing Lawn to Promote Pollination, Discovers Rare Flower – The Messenger

Darko Mandich, creator of a plant-based honey called Mellody, recently appeared on the PBN podcast

BY POLLY FOREMAN

Despite what many people think, honey is not an environmentally friendly food choice

The creator of the “world’s first” plant-based honey replica has described the honey industry as one of the “biggest” examples of greenwashing that exists.

Darko Mandich recently appeared on an episode of the Plant Based News podcast with Robbie Lockie. The Serbian entrepreneur is known for founding a company called MeliBio. The company makes what’s thought to be the first ever vegan honey – named Mellody – with the same molecular composition as honey made from bees.

Mandich worked for a number of conventional food conglomerates in Eastern Europe before entering the plant-based space. He specialized in the honey industry, but became increasingly concerned about the huge environmental costs of exploiting bees to create the food. “The biggest impact that honey production has is the impact it has on our biodiversity,” he told Lockie. “Learning about that was something that was kind of an epiphany moment for me.”

Mellody/Evan SungMellody is said to look and taste just like real honey

The environmental impact of honey

Many people believe that honey production benefits the environment, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Honey comes from just one bee species, the apis mellifera (also known as the western honey bee). Artificially breeding these bees and introducing them to non-native lands reaps havoc on local ecosystems, meaning other bee species decline. Due to their efficiency at collecting pollen, the honey bees remove natural resources that wild species depend on.

“Learning about [the honey industry’s] impact was a difficult one for me,” Mandich said. “The honey industry narrative was: ‘The more honey you sell, the more bees will get to work. By employing the bees you’re giving them a life.’ That narrative is one of the biggest lies that exists today. Making honey using honey bees is one of the biggest greenwashing that exists today.”

Is plant-based honey the future?

Despite its huge ethical costs, honey is big business across the world. The global honey market is worth $10 billion, and it’s projected to grow to $15 billion in the next few years. As well as being sold as a standalone product, honey is often found as an ingredient in foods, drinks, and cosmetics all over the world.

As we battle an ever-worsening climate crisis, Mandich’s company could provide a more viable alternative to honey made from bees. Founded in 2020, MeliBio delivers what it calls “the future of honey,” which is said to be “sustainable, delicious, nutritious, and animal-free.” The product has the same molecular composition as honey, and the company uses plant science and fermentation to mimic the process by which bees create it, but without use of the animal.

The company is based in Oakland, California. It initially created its product for B2B customers and food service. In March 2022, the company secured $5.7 million in a funding round to commercialize its first line of plant-based honey.

‘We can learn so much’

The general public often tends to think of insects like bees as lacking in sentience and personalities, which means many don’t think twice about exploiting them for personal gain. But Mandich is passionate about shutting these stereotypes down.

“We see them from afar, we are kind of scared of them, we see how they operate,” he said. “They move in a certain direction, do the dance, and interact. But once you get to see a bee very close, you start to realize there are different species of bees, and how maybe the same species of two bumble bees also look somewhat differently. We can learn so much from the bees, we just need to start looking at them closely.”

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/vegan-honey-creator-industry-greenwashing/

For more information, go to: https://siouxhoney.com/

Texas Public Radio | By Brian Kirkpatrick

Brian Kirkpatrick / Eighteen-year-old Cashlyn Varnon was selected as this year’s festival Honey Queen.

Uvalde brought back its Honey Fest tradition this weekend to celebrate the local industry, little more than one year after the Robb Elementary School shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead. It was cancelled last year because of the tragedy.

The bees that produce the region’s honey and the townspeople both share a strong sense of community.

“They are tough, and they are going to do everything they can to survive. They work together, and they all pull their weight. And it’s all about the hive,” said local beekeeper Linda Williams.

Brian Kirkpatrick / Beekeeper Chianne Delacerda at the Uvalde Honey Fest on June 9, 2023.

Fellow local beekeeper Chianne Delacerda liked the comparison, too. Delacerda operates Deer Valley Apiary just outside Uvalde.

“The community still tries to come together,” she said. “We still try to stay cohesive as a unit. Everyone kind of supports each other through everything.”

Festival manager Gloria Reza agreed.

Brian Kirkpatrick / Bees at work at the Uvalde Honey Fest on Friday, June 9, 2023.

“We are one big beehive. We’re a bunch of worker bees, and we will find a way to pick up the pieces,” she said. “Not just from this tragedy, but from anything that has happened to us.”

It’s clear the residents of this farm and ranching town will always remember the shooting victims.

Eighteen-year-old Honey Queen Cashlyn Varnon was asked if the festival is a step toward a new normal. “A little bit. It’s definitely still different,” she said.

Brian Kirkpatrick / Honey Fest in Uvalde on June 9, 2023.

The festival was held at the town square in the heart of Uvalde. There were all sorts of vendors, including those selling honey, made by the area’s bees.

At the park’s center, however, remained the wooden crosses with the names of those who died, along with photos and mementos from their lives.

Brian Kirkpatrick / Wooden crosses remain at the center of the Uvalde town square, where Uvalde held its 2023 Honey Fest.

And in the countryside around the town, bees were busy collecting nectar from wildflowers dotting the landscape, including from Guajillo brush, which produces what one beekeeper called a light, sweet, beautiful honey.

The beekeepers explained that honey has healing properties for humans — a quality Uvalde treasures more than ever before.

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: ‘We are one big bee hive:’ Uvalde festival celebrates honey’s power to heal wounds and soothe souls | TPR

The Princess keeps bees at Anmer Hall, on the Sandringham estate, where each batch of honey has its own distinct flavour

By Patrick Sawer,

The Princess of Wales is photographed wearing a bee suit.

An invitation to one of the garden parties at Buckingham Palace has always been regarded as quite the hot ticket.

But the invite will now be all the sweeter, following revelations that the honey being served to guests as part of the refreshments may well have been produced by royal hands.

To mark World Bee Day on Saturday May 20 and promote the importance of bees to the biodiversity of the planet, the palace released a photograph of the Princess of Wales busy tending to her hives in Norfolk.

The Princess of Wales keeps bees at Anmer Hall, on the Sandringham estate, where each batch of honey has its own distinct flavour depending on where the beehives are situated at time of collection, including lime from the trees which line the roads, or heather and lavender.

She brought a jar of the honey from the hives for schoolchildren to try on a visit to the Natural History Museum’s new biodiversity hub in June 2021.

The firm’s founders Brian and Pat Sherriff had previously designed military uniforms, but turned to making beekeeping equipment after setting up South Cornwall Honey Farm in the mid-1960s, which now has 400 colonies.

World Bee Day aims to raise awareness of the importance of bees, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development.

Apiary enthusiasm runs in the family

The Princess of Wales is not the only royal happy to don a beekeeper’s jacket and protective hood to gather the sweet harvest.

The Queen is also a keen apiarist, and keeps bees at Raymill, her six-bedroom retreat in Lacock, Wiltshire, 17 miles from the King’s Highgrove home.

During a visit to Launceston, Cornwall, last summer Queen Camilla met honey-producers selling jars in the town square, and told them she was a hands-on beekeeper and had only lost one colony during the previous winter.

King Charles in Argentina wearing a beekeeper suit for a visit to see bee keeping at Buenas Ondas organic vegetable garden CREDIT: Tim Graham

Honey produced by the Queen’s bees is sold at Fortnum & Mason to raise funds for charity. This year’s recipient is Nigeria’s first sexual assault referral centre, which the Queen supports as patron.

She is also president of Bees for Development, a charity training beekeepers and protecting bee habitats in more than 50 countries.

Buckingham Palace itself is home to four beehives on an island in a lake in the garden, and there are two hives in Clarence House’s garden.

These hives produced more than 300 jars of honey last year for the palace kitchens, which is frequently served to guests in honey madeleines, as a filling for chocolate truffles or in honey and cream sponge.

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: Princess of Wales tends her beehives in keeper’s suit (telegraph.co.uk)

To find Jim Hodder, owner of Eden Valley Honey, drive east on Haystack Butte Road about a mile and a half, then turn right at the big cottonwood stump.

Beyond the stump, about a dozen white-faced ewes — lambs in tow — are loose among a maze of corrals and outbuildings.

Hodder, 78, sits down on a diamond plate toolbox to take a load off and explain how he built a premium honey business in Sweetwater County over the past 50 years.

A bum lamb nibbles on a piece of orange bailing twine at his feet, reluctant to leave his side. In the background, a tiger-striped barn cat dives into a pile of straw and comes out with a fat mouse.

Hodder is a friendly fellow, but he’s lukewarm at best about being featured by Cowboy State Daily. That’s because every drop that comes out of his honey processing plant (aka, the honey house) is already spoken for.

Publicity is the last thing he needs.

Fine Honey Is Like Fine Wine

“Honey is a little bit like wine,” he said. “Not everyone’s palate is the same, but most people like the lighter-colored, sweeter honey. Some honey tastes sweet, but it will have an aftertaste. We don’t get that here and that’s one reason why our honey is so popular.”

Hodder started propagating bees in the early 1970s because he wanted to be more self-sufficient. Most of what he eats and feeds his family comes from his farm. He also raises laying hens, raises and butchers his own beef and lamb, and grows vegetables in a greenhouse.

Another important factor that sets Eden Valley Honey apart is the roughly 2.4 million bees working overtime to haul in the nectar from alfalfa and sweet clover in this part of north Sweetwater County.

For 50 years, Jim Hodder has been producing his Eden Valley Honey. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)

Better Bees

In more temperate climates, bees have months to do their work. But at this elevation (6,580 feet) the season is short, and plants only produce nectar for about six weeks. When nighttime temperatures drop below 50 degrees, plants don’t produce much nectar, Hodder said.

The bees must be in good shape when they arrive because they don’t have much time to complete their important work.

In his first year, Hodder said he had three hives that yielded about 200 pounds of honey. Over the years his production has increased to about 20,000 pounds a year.

Honey production correlates with bee reproduction, and when hives reproduce too fast it causes the bees to swarm. When they swarm, that means they have outgrown their hives and they go looking for a new place to live.

The best queen bees will produce up to 3,500 eggs per day. For optimal honey production, the hives ride a fine line that means the bees need to be in good shape, but not too good, he said.

“If your bees aren’t in shape when they get here you don’t get a good honey crop,” Hodder said. “You need your bees at full strength, but not too strong or they will swarm. To make them strong you manipulate. If you have a weak hive, you even them up by moving some bees in.”

Hodder further explained that some queens are better than others, and as a beekeeper it’s important to select queens that can acclimate to their environment. That makes buying queen bees similar to buying bulls for a cattle operation.

Hit The Road

The “getting here” part is another fascinating aspect of bee propagation. The hives that produce the golden Eden Valley Honey spend most of the year in other states. They only live in Wyoming from the end of June to the middle of October.

Hodder said in mid-October the hives are loaded on trucks and hauled to a storage facility in Blackfoot, Idaho. At this point they will check the weight of the hives and provide syrup as a supplemental feed if needed.

TJ Honey in Blackfoot is a business that boards about 20,000 colonies for honey business owners from throughout the Intermountain region every winter. It’s a huge, air-conditioned warehouse that holds the hives at about 42 degrees.

The warehouse is air-conditioned because the hives produce a lot of heat, Hodder said.

“If kept at 42 degrees they are almost in suspended animation and they don’t have to move too much,” he said. “If it gets too cold, they eat a lot of honey and fan to keep the nest warm, which creates a lot of heat.”

On To California, Then Oregon

In mid-January the bees are hauled to California’s San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, where they go to work pollinating almond orchards. Hodder said almond growers pay beekeepers for this service, but  almond trees produce a limited amount of nectar that keeps the bee colonies alive but doesn’t yield much, if any, honey.

When the bees go into the pollination cycle in California there are 6,000 to 10,000 bees per hive. By the time the hives reach full strength the following summer their numbers will have increased to 60,000 bees per hive, he said.

In April, the hives are loaded up again and trucked north to Oregon, where they’ll pollinate prune orchards. While they’re in Oregon they’ll make some honey on blackberry and vetch nectar, but Hodder said the hives are reproducing fast at this point and consume most of the honey they produce.

Back To Wyoming

Then in late June the trucks are loaded again and the two-day, 1,100-mile trip back to Eden Valley begins.

Hauling bees on semitrucks is a time-sensitive endeavor, Hodder said. They make stops along the way and wet the hives down with water to cool them and give the bees a drink. They also cover the loads with mesh tarps to help prevent losses.

Parasitic mites are one of the biggest challenges with bee propagation. Hodder said bee numbers peak in July and begin to drop after that. They treat the hives with an antibiotic, but as bee numbers drop as part of their natural life cycle, the mite problem multiplies.

Colony collapse disorder is another concern for the bee industry. Hodder said scientists have been studying the problem and looking for solutions for the past 20 years, but they’re still uncertain of the cause.

Finally, The Honey

After harvest, the honey is put through an extractor to remove wax, then it’s heated to about 125 degrees and bottled. Too much heat turns the honey dark. Raw honey is heated to 90 degrees before bottling and it contains some pollen.

Hodder added that he only eats raw honey because its better for you from a health perspective. His theory is the pollen in raw honey works like a vaccine against allergies and he has customers that seek it out for that reason.

Hodder said it’s difficult to hire people to work with bees because stings are frequent and working with bees swarming around your head can be unnerving.

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/05/07/50-years-of-sweet-success-for-wyomings-eden-valley-honey/

Alicia Devine

Bees were buzzing as they were getting acquainted with their new bee boxes in the apiary built by Leon County Jail inmates.

Dustin Nixson, an inmate, was eager to learn how to care for the thousands of bees in the four bee boxes as part of the Leon County Sheriff’s Office Ecology and Reentry Training Hub (EARTH) Haven.

He suited up in a beekeeper suit before gently blowing smoke into a bee box under the guidance of Sgt. Daniel Whaley, who cares for his own apiary outside of his day job.

The program has been up and running for about a week and Nixson is excited for what the future holds.

He’s looking forward to teaching his wife and children everything he learns through the EARTH program and turning beekeeping into a business to support his family when he goes home.

“We get a hive to take with us, the suits and basically everything we need to start,” said Nixson. “It’s going to be cool.”

Inmates who participate in the six-month program can earn a beekeeper apprentice certificate from the University of Florida.

If they don’t complete the program before they are released, they can choose to finish it and receive the certificate on their own.

Following the apprentice certification, inmates could choose to further their education and become master beekeeper, which would allow them to travel, inspect other beekeeper’s hives and help them better their apiaries.

“I’m definitely trying to take this all the way,” Nixson said with a smile. “It’s a very positive program. I see this one succeeding big time because everybody’s into it.”

There are currently three inmates working with the bees. Whaley hopes to grow the program to include 15-30 at a time over the next few years.

“It’s unlimited what you can do with honey, beeswax and the comb itself. It’s pretty amazing,” Nixson said. “You can make soaps, lip balms, and all kinds of candles.”

Nixson plans to focus on honey production as he gets his apiary off the ground and then getting his wife in on the business with the soap and candles.

EARTH Haven will offer other skills and trainings as well as possible certifications in pesticide application, arboriculture, landscaping, and horticulture.

This program is 100% funded by the Inmate Welfare Fund, in which monies are self-generated, non-taxpayer funds used to improve the transition of inmates back into the community.

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: Leon County jail reentry program trains inmates in beekeeping, business (tallahassee.com)

Annabel Keenan

Bruce Gifford of Cultured Bees tending to the beehives on the roof of the Brooklyn MuseumCourtesy Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn is buzzing. Sitting on top of the Brooklyn Museum are two beehives, each housing between 10,000 and 50,000 honey bees that travel an average of three miles in search of nectar, pollinating local flowers in the process.

The beehives are part of the museum’s sustainability initiatives, which also include an internal Sustainability Task Force, as well as programs, events and exhibitions related to environmental justice and climate change. Installed and maintained by beekeeper Bruce Gifford of Cultured Bees, the hives are part of a growing movement to use cultural spaces to support local ecosystems.

The Brooklyn Museum began its green initiatives in 2022 to promote socially and environmentally conscious change within the institution and community. “We developed a ‘social action framework’,” says Adjoa Jones de Almeida, the museum’s deputy director for learning and social impact. “This framework proposes a sustained, multi-year commitment to two key issues reflecting broad and urgent global themes with serious repercussions for Brooklyn and our world: climate change and mass criminalisation.”

To address these issues, the museum has been taking small steps, such as phasing out single-use plastic bottles, along with making larger structural changes, including updating gas and electric equipment to reduce operational carbon emissions. The museum is also supporting the work of local social and climate justice organizations and sustainability initiatives through partnerships and community engagement.

Emblematic of this local outreach are the thousands of bees that descend from the museum’s roof and pollinate the surroundings, including the adjacent Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. An individual bee pollinates around 1,000 flowers per day, so each colony may be pollinating 50 million flowers daily. While bees are self-sufficient, Gifford assists the initial growth, feeding new hives sugar water at least once a week until they support themselves by foraging for nectar. He monitors the bees throughout the spring and summer, visiting every few weeks to check overall health and add layers if needed. He harvests surplus honey in the fall and leaves enough for the bees to survive the winter.

“Providing bees a safe space to build their colonies while learning about their society and social structure is fascinating,” says Gifford. “I love observing the structure of a hive–their democratic decision making–and the crucial role bees play in our ecosystem. All are opportunities to spark productive conversations and provide a lens to ponder human societies.”

Beekeeping was legalized in New York City in 2010 when the municipal board of health voted unanimously to lift one of the only bans on the practice in the United States. The first museum beehives in the city were installed shortly thereafter at the Whitney Museum of American Art in its former Upper East Side location. Moving downtown along with the museum in 2015, the bees now pollinate the High Line and are maintained by beekeepers Chucker Branch and Christine Lehner.

In addition to the Brooklyn Museum’s beehives, Gifford installed and maintains two rooftop hives at the Museum of Arts and Design (Mad). Constructed last spring, the hives pollinate Central Park and are also home to up to 50,000 bees each, including two queens: Queen Aileen, named after Mad’s founder, Aileen Osborn Webb, and Queen Toshiko Takaezu, named for the famed ceramic artist and museum supporter.

This spring, the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) is working with Gifford to install four beehives of its own. Additionally, for the first time since 2015, Moma will exhibit its renowned Pierre Huyghe sculpture Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt) (2012) beginning in June as part of a contemporary art installation in its sculpture garden. The work features a concrete nude female figure whose head is made of a beehive structure, wax and a live bee colony that is maintained by a specialised beekeeper unrelated to Gifford. While the sculpture is separate from the rooftop hives, the bees will support local pollination.

Through all these initiatives, visitors can see firsthand how a museum impacts the local ecosystem. “Cultural institutions are keenly aware of social and environmental issues and are eager to help affect real change in the world,” says Gifford. He adds that, by hosting beehives, “Institutions become producers, as well as caretakers of the city.”

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: The museum bees pollinating Brooklyn (theartnewspaper.com)

Maintaining natural wildlife is one of the pillars of saving our planet. Many insects, such as bees, are overlooked for their contribution to the natural landscape of the world.

Cross-pollination is when the pollen from one plant get transferred over to the pistils of another.  This action allows flowers to mix their genetic information, evolve, and survive in the wild. Without cross-pollination, new plants can’t grow and feed the wildlife surrounding them.

When bees land on a flower, they pick up some of its pollen and then fly to another. Cross-pollination occurs naturally from the bees transferring particles from one plant to another.

With an increase in pesticides used by farmers to ‘preserve’ their crops, every year there is a 40% decrease in surrounding bee populations. Without the insects, humans have to manually cross-pollinate, which is less efficient.

A Hollywood Legend Steps In

(YT)

One household name, Morgan Freeman, heard about this wildlife crisis and wanted to help. When he’s not in front of the camera, Morgan spends a lot of time on his ranch in Mississippi. He owns a sizeable piece of land, roughly 124-acres large and wanted to dedicate some of it to saving the bees.

Morgan imported 26 bee hives from Arkansas to his ranch. He works daily to feed the bees a mixture of sugar and water. This is necessary because when the hive moves, the bees lose track of where their food source is. He and his team have even planted bee-friendly plants such as magnolia trees, lavender and clover.

When speaking to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Morgan said he has a special relationship with the bees. “What I’ve discovered is that I don’t have to put on a bee suit or anything to feed them.” He said, “They have the outfits for people who can’t resonate.”

At the core of Morgan’s new hobby is a mutual respect between himself and the insects he cares for. The bees are socially aware enough to understand that he brings the food source and poses no threat. “I’m never gonna get stung,” he said.

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: https://www.goalcast.com/morgan-freeman-sanctuary-bees/

From beekeeping to crochet, these hobbies passed down through generations form lasting bonds

Clea Skopeliti

It’s fair to say Alasdair Friend didn’t always picture himself as a beekeeper. But when a diagnosis of motor neuron disease meant his father was no longer able to tend to his hives, Friend resolved to carry on his passion. He was not without doubts at first: “I remember driving back with this actively buzzing box of 40,000 bees and thinking, what have I signed up for?”

Now the proud owner of no fewer than 10 beehives, Friend, 57, who is a teacher in Edinburgh, still has the descendants of the bees he brought home two years ago. “Although they are pretty feisty at times and cause me moments of panic, I love carrying on with his traditions,” Friend says. “Each year I take the hives to the Cairngorms to collect heather honey to exactly the same place he brought his hives.”

How we spend our free time matters: research suggests that having hobbies can enhance mental and physical wellbeing and offer greater life satisfaction. From team sports to crafts classes, they can also be a means to meaningfully connect with others. And for some, having an interest in common offers a way to feel close to a loved one, whether or not they still practice it together.

Friend says his father seems “really pleased” that he has carried on with his hobby. “He’s still very interested – there’s an element of him doing it through me. I’ve met some great people and I’ve had a lot of fun, as well as moments of extreme discomfort when I’ve been stung and moments of terror when they start swarming.”

“It’s great to feel he’s passed on this bee baton to me and I’ve run with it. There are lots of things I’ve shared with my dad – he taught me how to love the hills and climbing mountains. Keeping bees is another thing later in life

To read the entire article go to; ‘He passed the bee baton on to me’: people who inherit hobbies | Hobbies | The Guardian

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: ‘He passed the bee baton on to me’: people who inherit hobbies | Hobbies | The Guardian

• By Margaret Hetherwick | Examiner staff writer

Beekeeper Kevin McKean pulls a frame partially filled with brood (larvae) from his backyard hive.

Craig Lee/The Examiner

When people asked Kevin McKean what he was going to do during retirement, he always said the same thing: “I’m going to have pigs and bees.” The pigs didn’t work out — it’s not easy to raise hogs in San Francisco — but the bees became his life.

Apiarists, or beekeepers, who raise bees in urban spaces are not in it just for the honey or a means to an end in crop production. When a city is your pasture and your livestock is a critical part of the food chain, you become a combination of farmer, conservationist, educator and occasional public safety officer during swarms.

The San Francisco Beekeepers Association is a growing community of apiarists dedicated to serving honeybees and the people who manage them in San Francisco. As ambassadors for local pollinators, their work is instrumental in maintaining the biodiversity of The City, but most

“People always think that you can’t keep bees in The City, but I think it’s actually a lot easier,” said Taylor Capozziello, president of the SFBA. The SF beekeeping community is quite large, she explained, which might surprise  some. “You end up figuring out that people in a few blocks’ radius are beekeepers as well.”

Agriculture in cities is becoming more common, and for good reason — growing your own food presents a direct path to food equity, is healthier and reduces emissions that would be used to truck fresh food in from farms. However, it is predicated on having space, time and capital to host plants or animals, which is not a reality for some, especially in San Francisco.

Bees are different, said McKean. They’re low profile, and they have their own agenda.

“It’s a lot like having a flock of sheep, except there are 50,000 sheep instead of 100, the sheep are the size of a marble, or tinier, and they’re completely wild,” he said. “People manage bees, we put them in hives, and we can mostly persuade them to stay there. The truth is that they manage themselves.”

McKean got started with SFBA in 2014. It takes a fair amount of capital to invest in beekeeping: suits, frames, boxes, various tools, smokers and a class to learn about bee care can run you between $400 and  $650, plus subsequent fees in the hundreds every year to restore supplies.

Joining a local beekeeping guild like the SFBA can offset some of the initial costs with gear discounts, and having new members join an organization incentivizes responsible husbandry, noted Capozziello.

Part of that is understanding your role as a beekeeper, explained McKean.

“You are there to guide, make suggestions and try to influence what the bees do. But ultimately the bees will do whatever they’re going to do, as we discover again and again every day. They make crazy choices.”

Once a colony gets going, it goes through a boom-and-bust seasonal cycle. Right now, honeybees are slowly beginning to reopen their hives (literally — bees close off the hive’s entrances in colder months to conserve heat) after a long winter spent in a survival cluster. Springtime is spent rehydrating honey stores, building the population back up and expanding honeycombs.

Happ-bee New Year — A bee’s New Year is in the fall, according to experts, because its condition at the end of summer after the gathering seasons greatly affects its prosperity the following spring.

Bees can thrive indefinitely with proper care, but they are still fragile, and often colonies collapse. Keepers in the U.S. lose about 30% to 40% of colonies annually to any number of causes: parasites, disease, pesticides, extreme climate or poor management. Any of these can smite an entire colony in a matter of weeks.

“Every new beekeeper goes through the agony of losing their first colony,” said McKean. “We’ve joked in the club about needing to offer grief counseling. It’s almost like losing a pet — they’re not going to curl up with you and watch TV, but people have an emotional bond with bees.”

In San Francisco, the health of the local pollinator population is greatly affected by the resources available to it, said Capozziello. That means the plants in nurseries, the trees on the streets of The City and flowers in backyards are potential vectors. So far, the honeybees have proven to be resilient and adaptable.

“We have lots of speculation on it,” she said. “For a while it was getting pretty rough. Now it seems like more bees are surviving the winter than before. Maybe our methods are getting better, maybe we’re breeding more mite-resistant bees. Maybe there are less pesticides in our plants. So at least we’re hopeful.”

But not all pollinators have the benefit of a shepherd. There are 1,500 species of native bees in California, 81 of which live in the Bay Area. Most live alone, which reduces some of the dangers of disease or pest transmission, but the impact of pesticides is often lethal. Capozziello said that as stewards of bees, it is the SFBA’s imperative to help all of them — which means planting a wide variety of native plants and creating places for the native bees to nest.

“I think a lot of people have started to realize that (saving the bees) is not just about the European honeybee, which people usually first get excited about, but a lot of different pollinators,” she said.

Among other urban spaces, The City is uniquely qualified to achieve that goal. It’s fairly mild, and even the most dense industrial or built-up neighborhoods are not far from a green space.

“In this city, even if your bee is flying out of Market and Kearny, they fly a quarter of a mile and they’re in parklands near the Embarcadero or Western Addition where they can graze,” said McKean.

In fact, he added, density can also be a good thing.

“San Francisco has such a crazy variety of flowering plants, both indigenous and imported, so you get this wonderful mixture of flavors, and every batch from every neighborhood is a little different. San Francisco honey is fabulous.”

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: Urban beekeeping in San Francisco: conservation and honey | Culture | sfexaminer.com

Coral Gables (United States) (AFP) – Melissa Sorokin sees herself as “a bee advocate,” deeply passionate about helping to rescue the at-risk creatures that play such a critical role in biodiversty

Often called in by spooked or concerned residents, she acts as emergency responder for the vital pollinators, spending the substantial time it takes to move threatening or threatened hives to safer locations.

Sorokin, who lives in Florida, says rescuing hives is infinitely better than homeowners or businesses allowing pest control services to swoop in and simply kill the bees.

“If they don’t call me, as a beekeeper, they are most likely going to get an exterminator, who instead kills the bees. It’s easy, it’s quick, it’s good money, cheap for them,” says Sorokin, 54.

On the other hand, “I’m like a bee advocate, a bee tender,” she says. “I love them. And I have a friendship with them.”

Sorokin’s mission is vital, she adds, because bees are under threat from climate change, pesticides, large cultivation of single crops, urbanization and invasive species.

The honey bee population is in freefall. A December study from Penn State University found that the United States experienced a 43 percent colony loss between April 2019 and April 2020.

The knock-on effects are immense, with the US Food and Drug Administration noting that about one third of food eaten by Americans comes from crops pollinated by honey bees, including apples, melons, cranberries, pumpkins and broccoli.

On a sunny afternoon, Sorokin heads to a client’s garden in Coral Gables, near Miami, to remove a beehive.

She first scouts out the place where she suspects the bees are hiding: a shed attached to a house.

Once the presence of the insects is confirmed, she burns pieces of wood in a smoker, dons a mesh head net, and blows smoke into the shed’s eaves to calm the bees.

She then grabs a chainsaw and cuts a wooden rectangle in the roof eave. Pulling back the planks reveals a humming, heaving hive.

Sorokin, wearing protective gloves, carefully removes panels of honeycomb covered with bees, and places them like racks in an artificial hive.

“It’s not very complicated to move bees. They sleep at night. So you can move them at night or you can move them in the morning keeping everything nice and close,” she explains.

“My goal, my wish,” is to help the bees, she says. “I hope that they have a better life with me because I help them.”

When Sorokin finishes transferring the insects from the shed, she closes up the new box hive and takes it to her car, where she straps it in with a seat belt.

We are here to share current happenings in the bee industry. Bee Culture gathers and shares articles published by outside sources. For more information about this specific article, please visit the original publish source: For a best friend to Florida bees, each rescue is personal (france24.com)