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Honey bees' wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.
 Bees act as a biological filter. They die if they come into contact with toxins, thus preventing pollutants from coming into the hive. In ancient Greece it was custom to offer honey to the gods and to spirits of the dead. Mead, an alcohol drink made with honey, was considered the drink of the gods. In Medieval times, someone with a serious need for constant mastication came up with a recipe for chewing wax with the main ingredient being beeswax. Here's an authentic recipe: Ingredients: (Oil of terebinth is the old name fore turpentine and will give chewing wax and authentic flavor of pine-tree resin. We now know better than to ingest turpentine!) Directions: Honey is a wonderful thing to add to your bath. Put two ounces of honey in a glass with five drops of lavender oil or other pure aromatherapy oil of your choice. If the honey is too thick, heat it by placing in a glass of warm water. Add one to two tablespoons of the honey/scented oil mixture to your bathwater to help you relax. Lavender is a gorgeous herb that has been used for centuries to combat insomnia.
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The Art of Invention
Perfect Petal Flower Preservation Kits | Flowers Forever | Peek Into the Gardens Purity & Poison | Miracles & Magic | About the Inventor Miracles & Magic
Honeybees are the single most important creature on the
planet. Without bees there would be no agriculture to speak of. Plant
pollination is vital to food production in every part of the world. This
miraculous little insect pollinates 95% of our food crops which is crucial to
the survival of all species.
It is estimated 2.9 million bee colonies exist in the U.S. today, more than 2 million of these colonies continually travel from place to place as new queens emerge, and the need for building new hives grow. Each bee can pollinate 500 blooms per day, and exhausting task. They can gather nectar from up to 100 plants in each trip filling their abdomen with the beginnings of a new honey crop. Next time you eat an almond, cherry, apple, melon, plum, blueberry, pear etc., pick and smell your favorite flower or gaze upon a field of wildflowers, thank the little honeybee. Bees are very hard workers. During the peak pollen-gathering seasons of spring and summer honeybees work 12 hours a day from sunrise to sunset, carrying over half her weight in pollen and nectar. Extremely efficient creatures bees utilize each drop of nectar and pollen converting it into honey and royal jelly for feeding the numerous infants and workers in the hive. During their short lifecycle of 6 weeks the female worker bee spends most her time gathering pollen. Bees have amazing skills as: gymnasts, map makers, engineers and architects. They do the waggle dance, wiggling their abdomen creating movement and sound, mapping a route to the best flowers for the other workers. They construct intricate hives taking measurements using a unique method called the living bee chain. The bees dangle holding on to each other's legs taking precise measurements before building a new hive. They resemble acrobats suspended in mid air. Each cell built is a perfect hexagon with six equal sides, constructed of feather light beeswax the comb can support pounds of honey. The social structure of the bee is simplistic, the vast majority of bees are female workers, they perform all the tasks for the hive, addressing all the physical needs of the other bees. Like women everywhere the female bee is responsible for the survival of her species. The sex of newborn bees is rarely a surprise only 100 out of 200,000 larva develop into males. Once again it's the female that acts a midwife and nursemaid to the male. The males have only one purpose in life to mate with the queen, once mated the female consumes her mate, ouch! Theoretically the nutrients contained in a single ounce of honey can provide a bee with the necessary energy to fly around the world. In a drones lifetime she flies the equivalence of seven to ten times around the world. Each bee is responsible for the production of 1/12 teaspoon of honey. A productive hive of 160,000 bees can produce 2 lbs. of honey daily, 60 lbs. annually an incredible amount for such tiny insects. Female worker honeybees secrete wax from special glands on the underside of their abdomens. This odorless wax is secreted as a clear liquid onto wax mirrors, or plates. The beeswax hardens as it comes into contact with the air and turns bright white. Beeswax darkens as it becomes contaminated with pollen and honey, as well as the gums and resins (called propolis) bees collect from flowers. The fragrant odor of unrefined beeswax is due mostly to these contaminates, particularly the propolis, which is used by drones to varnish the hives interior. Constant attention is paid to the birth cycle. In a 24 hour period the mature queen lays 1500 eggs. To stimulate wax production, the bees gorge themselves with honey or sugar syrup and huddle together to raising the temperature of the cluster to the optimal temperature of 95°. Beeswax is used to build the honeycomb chambers in the hive employed for food storage and as brooding cells for larva. The ratio of beeswax produced compared to honey is quite small only 7 lbs per year far less than one might think. This explains why beeswax is so expensive, apiarists find they ample supplies of honey but are always wanting for more beeswax. Bees must pay rent just like everyone else, the beekeeper is kind taking only part of the hives stash of beeswax and honey. To insure the hives survival during winter adequate storage supplies of honey must remain after the season's harvest. During processing honey and beeswax are separated from the comb when spun rapidly. A very sad fact is people consume a disproportionate amount of honey to sugar, our diets are overloaded with processed white sugar. Most Americans eat less than 1 lb of honey a year and some 50 lbs of sugar during the same period. Therefore beeswax is always at a premium and the poor beekeeper is left with an oversupply of honey and never enough beeswax to for his customers. Honey unlike beeswax is perishable and can only be stored for so long. Beekeepers are forced to dump their excess honey, losing millions of dollars each year. Until the advent of modem medicine it was customary for mothers to feed their babies, toddlers and young children a teaspoon of honey each day. The honey came from indigenous bee hives. The bees gather pollen from the local flowers. Honey works as the perfect inoculant's combating allergies, hay fever and asthma. The low daily dose of honey built the child's immune system well into adulthood eliminating annoying allergies and distressing respiratory illnesses. We must help protect our bees they hold the future to mankind's survival, they face great obstacles; predators, bacterial infections, environmental changes and uncertain weather conditions can all adversely effect the bee population. Many people don't realize how magnificent bees are and all the wonderful gifts they give us all.
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