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Neat to know ~ Feature of the week
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September is National Honey Month
Why should we care?
A European honey bee extracts nectar from an aster flower
Photo: John Severns
2020-09-27
In 1989, the National Honey Board designated September as National Honey Month in the United States. The purpose was to shine a spotlight on the marvelous benefits honey offers us, as well as the essential role honey bees play in nature and in farming. Also, it was a way to recognize and support local beekeepers.
What’s so good about honey?
- Through the ages, raw honey has been used to heal wounds, soothe scratchy throats, and ease digestive difficulties. And scientists have proven honey to indeed have antibacterial properties. (Note: this only applies to raw, unpasteurized honey. The kind you get in the grocery store is typically pasteurized. Try getting honey from a trustworthy local source in order to reap all of honey’s health benefits.)
- Pure honey – whether raw or pasteurized – never spoils. If it is stored properly (meaning, it is kept in a closed container and no moisture can get into it), even honey in a previously opened container will not go bad. If for any reason honey is exposed to moisture and does start to spoil, it will taste very obviously sour! Honey may crystallize if stored for a long time. If this happens, just heat it gently, and it will liquefy again and be as good as new.
- Honey is the only substance produced by insects that we eat. It requires virtually no processing before it is ready for consumption.
- The taste of a honey depends on the flower whose nectar was used by the bees to make it. Do a tasting of different honeys, and you’ll be astonished by the variety.
Why are bees important?
- Bees play a vital role in the production of many of the foods we consume. Believe it or not, roughly 1/3 of the food humans eat comes from plants that are pollinated by bees. In short, bees are the most important pollinators of the food crops that we rely on. The continuation of agriculture as we know it largely depends on bees.
- But bees are not just essential because of our dependence upon them. As is the case with any organism in nature, the bee is a part of a complex network called an ecosystem. If bees cease to exist, the whole system will be affected. Other creatures will die. There will be a ripple effect whose impact will be felt far and wide.
How do bees produce honey, and how is this process connected to pollination?
It’s a remarkably elegant system. First, let’s look at how bees make honey.
- Bees eat nectar. They get nectar from flowers. And this is why you see them buzzing around blooming plants in the spring and summer.
- When a bee gets a flower’s nectar into its mouth, a special enzyme in the bee’s saliva combines with the nectar. This produces honey.
- The bee carries the honey back to its hive. Inside the hive’s walls are cells, and it is there that the bee drops off its precious cargo.
So how is the bee’s quest for nectar related to pollination?
- Pollination is the process by which pollen is transferred from the male part of a plant to the female part of another plant of the same species. This is how plants reproduce; without pollination, plants would die off.
- Since plants cannot do this transferring process themselves, they often rely on bees and other insects to “carry” the pollen grains from one flower to another (from the male reproductive organs found in one bloom to the female reproductive organs found in another). Here is how bees perform this essential task. When a bee feeds on nectar from a flower, some of the tiny grains of pollen found on the bloom’s stamen (male reproductive organs) get stuck to the hairs of her body. With the pollen still on her abdomen, the bee continues on to collect nectar from another flower. That is when the pollen grains rub off of the bee’s body and onto the pistil (female reproductive organ) of the second flower. (By the way, most flowers have both male and the female reproductive organs, so a bee can land on any bloom of a species and be able to complete the pollination process.) Only once the pollen from the stamen of one flower has met the pistil of another flower of the same species can a chain of events take place that allows for the reproduction of the plant.
- Plants have evolved to attract bees and other insects. Flowers with lots of pollen and nectar are especially attractive to bees. In addition, the scent of a bloom can draw in bees, who have particularly powerful odor receptors. The bright colors of flowers are also meant to appeal to bees.
Why are bees in trouble?
Honey bees are dying off – quickly. Since the end of World War II (1945), the bee population in the U.S. has declined by more than half. Similar statistics are found in other parts of the world. Researchers and those concerned about the environment are scrambling to figure out why. Thanks to their work, some of the reasons have become clear.
- Climate change: Because of the global fluctuations in temperature due to climate change, plants are blooming at irregular times. Bees, however, have not adjusted to these changes, and at the times of the year when they are out and about in search of nectar, some of the plants upon which they depend for food have already finished their blooming phases. When the hatching of bees and the flowering of plants do not coincide, bees starve and plants are deprived of pollination.
- Habitat loss: Many of the areas inhabited by bees have been taken over by developments (buildings, roads, parking lots, etc.). In addition, lots of farms have closed down, and there is a global decrease in areas where flowering plants thrive. With less and less flowers in the world, there will inevitably be less and less bees.
- Pesticides: Crops, seeds and gardens are increasingly treated with neonicotinoid insecticides. These kill bees, along with other insects. When bees are exposed to such pesticides, their brains are damaged. They cannot navigate and don’f find their way back to the hive anymore. In this way, whole colonies of bees “collapse.”
Here are some more facts about bees.
- There are some 20,000 types of bee. The common honeybee is just one type.
- A bee’s wings typically flap more than 180 times per second.
- A normal, healthy hive can produce up to 400 lbs. (181 kg) of honey in a year.
- Honey bees live in large groups called “colonies,” of up to 80,000 bees. They are social creatures, and every bee has a role to play. Worker bees are female. They are the ones you see busily buzzing around, collecting nectar. They also keep the structure of the hive sound and clean. The queen bee lays eggs. There is only one queen, and she is the boss of the hive. She gives off chemicals that signal “directions” to the other bees. The queen doesn’t leave the hive. Drones are male. There are only a few hundred of these in the hive. They mate with the queen. In the cold months, they are expelled from the hive, so that the colony can survive when food supplies are low.
- Honey bees communicate by “dancing.” They make certain movements to let other bees know where food sources are located. The queen uses chemicals called pheromones to communicate when it is or isn’t time to mate. Worker bees also produce pheromones to inform fellow bees of a threat.
Sources: localhivehoney.com,”National Honey Month,” https://localhivehoney.com/blog/national-honey-month; sustainweb.org; “Why Bees Are Important,” https://www.sustainweb.org/foodfacts/bees_are_important/; pthomeandgarden.com, “5 Ways Bees are Important to the Environment,”http://www.pthomeandgarden.com/5-ways-bees-are-important-to-the-environment/; National Geographic.com, “Honeybee,” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/h/honeybee/; mobilecuisine.com; “Honey Fun Facts,”https://mobile-cuisine.com/did-you-know/honey-fun-facts/; bees.techno-science.ca, “Pollination,” https://www.bees.techno-science.ca/english/bees/pollination/default.php; elitedaily.com, “If All the Bees in the World Die Humans will not Survive,” https://www.elitedaily.com/news/world/humans-need-bees-to-survive/755737#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20one%20third%20of,have%20very%20much%20to%20eat.&text=If%20bees%20do%20not%20have,t%20have%20enough%20to%20eat.