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Why do I feel like “Dear Abby?”

Message:

I love my neighbor….BUT I hate the honey bees that FLY all over our
farm/yard/pool/kids and play yard!! My little grandchildren are scared of
them. How can I deter the bees without insulting my nice neighbor??

Frustrated!

Dear Frustrated,

I know this is not the answer you were looking for, but I offer it anyway.

I was surprised to hear you have a farm yet resent your neighbor’s honey bees. Of course, I know not what kind of farm it is, but I expect rural dwellers to have a greater understanding of the complexities and interrelationships of the natural world than those who live elsewhere.

But today, even the urban dwellers are more welcoming of honey bees than ever before. Residents of cities, counties, and other municipalities throughout North American and many other parts of the world are awakening to the fact that populations of natural pollinators are declining at an alarming and unprecedented rate, and we humans are ever more dependent on the ones we have left, especially the honey bee.

Yes, they can be annoying at times. And yes, their flight paths change with the seasons, depending on what is in bloom. But let me ask you some questions.

Do you eat colorful fruits and vegetables such as apples, cherries, avocados, blueberries, or mangoes? Thank a honey bee. Do you enjoy nuts such as almonds, cashews, or macadamias? Thank a honey bee. If you like to cook with canola oil or season your food with thyme, rosemary, basil, or sage, thank a honey bee. Do you ever plant seeds in your garden? Seeds such as carrot, kale, dill, or sunflowers? You guessed it. They all depend on honey bees.

Do your grandchildren wear cotton underwear or use cotton towels in the bath? Do they carve a jack-o-lantern in the fall, or enjoy a pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving? Again, thank a honey bee.

By the way, do they drink milk? Eat cheese, yogurt, sour cream, or ice cream? Don’t forget that bees pollinated the flower that made the seed that the farmer planted to raise the plant that fed the dairy cow.

But why stop there? A long, long time ago the bees pollinated many of the plants that fell to earth and became compressed by mudslides and water and all kinds of natural circumstances. Heat and pressure turned them into oil deposits which we pumped from the ground and formed into plastic to make milk jugs and toys, cribs and car seats.

In spite of all that, I agree no one should have to live in fear, especially not children, so this is what I recommend. You say you like your neighbor, the beekeeper. Good. Go knock on her door and explain that your grandkids fear the bees.

Ask her if she will show them the inside of a hive. Ask her if they can stick their fingers into a comb of honey warm from the sun and the bodies of thousands of bees. Tell her you want them to lick from their fingers one of the premier wonders of the natural world.

Ask her to catch a drone—they can’t sting—and let him walk about within their cupped hands. Let them count the six legs, five eyes, and two pairs of wings.

Ask if you can buy a comb or jar of honey to take back to your home and savor. Not only will the kids lose their fear, but they will remember the day for the rest of their lives. They will always understand the connection between bees and the foods we eat, and they will think you are the best grandparent in the universe . . . and they will be right.

And maybe, somewhere along this journey, you too will lose your fear—a fear that I suspect is the real problem here.

Best wishes,
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Can I start a new package on honey instead of syrup?

Sugar syrup is not the equivalent of infant formula. Sugar syrup is not something we feed to package bees because they are young, immature, or mere fledglings. In fact, bees are adults when they emerge from the brood comb. During their babyhood as larvae and pupae they ate royal jelly and bee bread, but an adult bee is fully formed and capable of eating real food. Real food for adult honey bees is honey.

I’ve been trying to understand why this question is so common, and I’ve concluded that we beekeepers give the impression that a new colony must have sugar syrup in order to survive, so new beekeepers become confused about its importance. Of course, this makes no sense: sugar syrup is a modern invention and honey bees are not.

As I’ve said before, we are lucky that bees can live on syrup because it’s so convenient when we don’t have honey on hand, or if the only honey we have is from an unknown source. But must bees have sugar syrup to start a new colony? Of course not.

Even though bees can survive on syrup, it is still a stop-gap measure suitable for short periods when better food is not available. Sugar is pure carbohydrate, pure energy for bees. It supplies no nutrients, no vitamins, no trace elements. So if you have honey from your own healthy hives, or the healthy hives of someone else, by all means feed them honey instead of sugar syrup. Your colonies will thrive because they have everything they need, not just the calories.

And, no, you don’t have to extract it and put it in a feeder. Good heavens, a feeder is also a modern invention. We put syrup in feeders not because the bees prefer it that way, but because we are not good at putting it in combs. The bees adapt to what we give them, but that doesn’t mean they prefer it.

You can put the frames of honey beside the new cluster or above it. If the honey is in their way, the bees will move it until they have their home arranged just the way the like. Trust them; they know what they are doing.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

The language of bee and honey

These words often show up in searches, so I decided to make a table of translations. I had guessed that many of them meant either “bee” or “honey” because they show up frequently, almost every day. So just for fun, here are those two words in 42 languages.

Language

Bee

Honey
Arabic نَحْلَـه، نَحْـل عَسَل
Bulgarian пчела мед
Chinese 蜜蜂 蜂蜜
Croatian pčela med
Czech včela med
Danish bi honning
Dutch bij honing
Estonian mesilane mesi
Euskera (Basque) erle ezti
Farsi زنبور عسل
Finnish ampiainen hunaja
French abeille miel
German Biene Honig
Greek μέλισσα Μέλι
Hebrew דְבוֹרָה דבש
Hindi मधुमक्खी शहद
Hungarian méh méz
Icelandic býfluga hunang
Indonesian lebah madu
Italian ape miele
Japanese みつばち 蜂蜜
Korean 벌 꿀
Lithuanian bitė medus
Latvian bite medus
Malay lebah madu
Norwegian bie honning
Polish pszczoła miód
Persian زنبور عسل
Pashto موچی شات
Portuguese abelha mel
Romanian albină miere
Russian пчела мёд
Slovak včela med
Slovenian čebela med
Serbian pčela мед
Spanish abeja miel
Swedish bi honung
Thai ผึ้ง น้ำผึ้ง
Turkish arı bal
Ukrainian бджола мед
Urdu شہد کی مکھی ، مگس شہد
Vietnamese con ong mật ong

Does your honey have that new-car smell?

I have been avoiding this post­­­­ largely because it speaks more to personal preference than stone-cold logic. Still, I was asked my opinion, so here it is.

I go to great effort to keep plastic out of my hives. First off, I can think of nothing natural about plastic, so if you are practicing so-called “natural” beekeeping, it makes sense to stay away from it.

Plastics are made from petroleum. The chemicals used to improve the flexibility and durability of plastic materials are called plasticizers. Plasticizers are nasty chemicals that tend to evaporate from plastic products as they age or leach into liquids that are contained within them—including food and drink.

The plastic becomes brittle and stiff as the plasticizers leave, and the surrounding materials pick up the smell and taste of the plasticizers. That “new car smell” or “new shower curtain smell” is the perfume of plasticizers. Worse, the migration of chemical seems to happen faster in warm or acidic environments—think beehive.

Some people are more sensitive to the flavor of leaching plastic than others. In blind taste tests, I can easily pick out honey that has been stored in plastic, and I’m sure other people can as well. Believe me, it is not pleasant.

Over my beekeeping years, I have tried to give plastics a chance. I have tried plastic foundation, plastic drone frames, plastic feeders, and plastic sections. But I have moved as far away from plastic as I can. When I open a beehive on a hot day I want to smell wax and honey and brood and nectar—not plastic.

Now if I use any foundation at all, I use wax. I’ve replaced plastic drone frames with homemade wooden ones, I’ve gone back to wooden section boxes, and I try to avoid feeding syrup by keeping plenty of honey on hand. Sometimes I feed pollen patties or candy cakes, but I stay away from liquid feed because of the plastic issue. (Although I admit to using the occasional baggie feeder when I’m out of other options.)

So there you have it—plastic-free beekeeping has become an obsession with me. I can understand those who feel differently because plastic is convenient, cheap, and readily available. Nevertheless, if you are selling honey to those who are interested in organic, natural, treatment-free, or environmentally friendly products, plastic-fantastic honey might not be the best choice.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite