Wasp
Honeybee with pollen
It is a very bad wasp season all over, probably due in part to the fact that we are so dry. Wasps are looking for liquid. They will suck the liquid out of plants, trees, puddles, bodies of water, animals if there is a wound. Wherever you go lately, if you look over a crowd of people you are sure to see someone swatting at an annoying wasp.
BUT BEE CAREFUL! Please watch out for honeybees. Not everything that looks like a “wasp” is bad. Honeybees are some of Gods most amazing and necessary creatures. God has given them the ability to create a “super food” and some amazing tasting honey as well!
Back to the wasps for a moment, if you do happen to get stung, grab a bottle of anti-perspirant roll-on and rub it on the sting. In seconds it immediately takes the sting away. When my boys were younger, we lived in the Okanagan and August was always wasp season. You either stopped going to the beach or you stopped taking drinks and food (a wasp attractor). Every mom carried a bottle of roll-on anti-perspirant in her bag. If you heard a child cry out, you knew it was probably a sting and off we ran with our bottles to ensure the child’s mom had some. It was a sting saver for sure!
Honeybees and ants are some of the hardest working creatures on the planet. Bees create some of the finest food in the world! I mean that literally - they create their own food and then they are necessary for almost 75% of the world’s food production and 90% of wild plants, due to the pollination job they do.
Bee decline is a very real thing, in fact, several areas in China now have to hand pollinate their orchard crops because the bee population has been wiped out. In 2018 the EU or European Union, had a forum tasking the countries with trying to find a way to keep bee populations up for food pollination. No bees… no pollination… no pollination… no food.
What foods do bees create?
Honey – that beautiful, sweet and thicky gooey liquid that we put on toast or use to sweeten our tea or …. So many uses.
Bee Pollen – this is the yellow powder that bees collect from flowers, very healthy and classified as a super food. According to the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry – bee pollen is particularly high in B vitamins, C and E. It has calcium magnesium, zinc and selenium, anitoxitants and more! When starting to take bee pollen – start with a small amount, a couple of granules and work your way up over time to 1 tsp slowly over a month or two. Do not give to children or pregnant women.
Propolis – used to seal the honeycomb, and make hives, it is a waxy resin type substance made by the bees from poplar and cone bearing trees. Propolis can help fight bacteria, viruses, and fungi, it has anti-inflammatory effects and can help heal skin.
Royal Jelly – this is the very special food that is fed only to the queen bee in the hive.
Fun Facts about Honeybees:
- Bees have 5 eyes
- Bees are insects so they have 6 legs
- Male bees in the hive are called drones
- Bees fly about 15 mph
- Bees collect the nectar and pollen in flowers to produce the honey
- A single bee will produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in it’s lifetime
- Female bees in the hive (except the queen) are called worker bees
- A queen bee can lay up to 2,000 per day roughly an egg every 43 seconds
- Honeybees are not aggressive, they will only attack if threatened
- After loosing its stinger, a bee will die
- Bees live an average of 28 days
- Bees have 170 odorant receptors – in other words an amazing sense of smell
- Queen bees live the longest – up to 5 years, but when one dies the worker bees will feed a newly hatched bee their special food – Royal Jelly. This food lets the young bee develop into a fertile queen
- Bees recognize human faces
- Bees also need trees to survive
- South Dakota is the largest bee producing area in N. America
- An average home in N. America eats 1.3 pounds of honey per year
- A healthy colony can produce up to 60-100 pounds of honey per year
- Bees sleep between 5 to 7 hours per day, most often at night
- Varroa mites are the honeybee’s enemy and they are killing hives worldwide the next exterminator of bees is pesticides and 1 billion pounds is used in the USA alone per year. 40% of bee colonies are lost each year due to pesticides
- In some areas of the world over 90% of the bees have been killed off
- A pound of honey can take up to 2 million flower visits with a round trip of 55,000 miles clocked in
- Ancient Egypt used to pay taxes with honey
- A bee can visit between 50-100 flowers on one trip, a bee can carry up to 35% of their body weight in pollen
- Honeybee pollenating services are estimated to be worth about $20 billion dollars to the USA economy and $577 billion worldwide.
WE HAVE TO HAVE BEES TO PRODUCE FOOD
- When a bee finds a good source of pollen it will do a “waggle” dance to inform other bees of the find
- Bees have 2 stomachs one is for eating and the other is for storing nectar to take back to the hive. They regurgitate it into the honeycomb cells, then fan it with their wings to cool, the end result being honey
- Bees, ants and grasshoppers have clear blood. Red blood comes from metal in our blood, bees do not have any metal
- A bee flaps its 4 wings about 11,400 per minute, those wings make the buzzing noise
- An average hive has between 50,000-60,000 worker bees
- Honey keeps for a very long time, a jar of perfectly good honey was found in King Tut’s tomb
- Honey is full of vitamins, essential minerals, antioxidants and amino acids
- Bee pollen is considered a superfood
- Honey has antimicrobial properties and can be used on minor wounds and burns and skin irritations
How can you help the plight of the honeybees?
Plant more flowers and trees. Go pesticide free: bees love clover, dandelions, any flowering weeds, let them grow. Buy from organic farms. Talk to the local politicians to become a Bee friendly city. Buy local honey to help your local beekeepers. Bees need drinking water as well as flowers and trees. Educate children on the necessity of honeybees.
God created honeybees and the cycle they are involved in to pollinate our food and it is our job to protect them to ensure their livelyhood and ultimately ours as well.
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