Honey Bee Good

I was talking with my friend's little girl (4 years old) today and she mentioned that she had seen a beehive last year near their storage shed. So, I told her that bees help out a lot in the garden. She "corrected me" by telling me that bees sting you lots and lots and it hurts.

Bees, traditionally, have a bit of a bad rap. Most people don't know that honey bees are very interesting and generally harmless little creatures. In fact, honey bees can be very beneficial to your garden. The following are some of the interesting, little know facts about bees;

1. Honey is the only natural food that is created by not killing or harming anything. (dairy products are created from the nutrients ingested by the cow when it "kills" the grass)
2. Honey is the only food that includes all of the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water. It's also the only food that contains "pinocembrin", an antioxident associated with improving brain function.
3. Each honey bee can only sting one time. The stinger is equipped with a barb that anchors it into whatever has been stung. Shortly after stinging, the bee dies from abdominal rupture.
4. The life expectancy of the average worker bee is 28 to 35 days.
5. To make one pound of honey, the workers of a hive will have to fly 55, 000 miles and tap two million flowers.
6. Throughout the course of her entire lifetime, a worker bee will create 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
7. It is estimated that 1, 100 bee stings are required to be fatal. (Provided you are not allergic to bees, of course)
8. Some of my favorite foods are from crop plants that are commonly pollinated by bees. For example; kiwifruit, cashews, watermelon, coffea arabica (think caffine :)), strawberries, apple trees, almonds, pears, rose hips (key ingredient in most herbal teas), and many more.
9. About 8% of the flowers of the world are primarily pollinated by "buzz pollination", a technique only employed by bees. The bee grabs the flower and moves it's flight muscles rapidly, causing flower and anthers to vibrate, thus dislodging the pollen. (Bumble bees commonly use buzz pollination, while honey bees do rarely, if ever).
10. Feral honey bee populations in the US have declined 90% over the past 50 years, except for in the southwest where they have been replaced by "Africanized bees".

There is speculation as to exactly how important the average honey bee is to the world, but while researching these facts I found several sites making "outrageous" claims like, "the effect of the Western Honey Bee on US crops only totals $14.6 billion USD in food crop value," and, "about one third of human nutrition is due to bee pollination."

I don't know if those things are true, but if you think about it, bees are pretty darn neat. If you don't hurt them, they generally don't hurt you and they can improve your garden, your yard, and in at least a small way, the world. So, if you do ever find a beehive in your backyard, consider the following;

Most cities across the US and Canada will have a professional beekeeper in or nearby that can give you advice or possibly relocate the beehive for you. With the declining population of honey bees that has been occuring over the past ten to twenty years, you might be glad that you chose relocation over extermination.

facts borrowed from;

• http://www.thaibugs.com/Articles/bee%20facts.html
• http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-bee-facts.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_pollination
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollinator_decline

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