Busy as a Bee

I attended a beekeeping class today at the Ecology Center. I could write for days about bees. Everything about bees is wondrous: their social structure, their crucial role in pollinating plants, the creation of the honeycomb, the complexity of the honey-making process....The Wrangler and I were enthralled when the apiarist described how bees select their hives. The scouts check out nearby "real estate" and report back to the colony. Each scout performs a dance that discloses the location of a potential site by conveying the angle of the sun's location, the distance, and direction. The bees buzz off to view the properties and then select the new hive via a democratic process.

Without veering off into Debbie Downer territory by lamenting colony collapse disorder, Africanized ("killer") honey bees (which descend from a colony of hybrid bees that were interbred by a biologist in the 1950s and accidentally released), bees feeding on nectar and pollen from genetically-modified or pesticide-laden plants, and the adverse consequences of interstate transportation of bees for commercial agricultural purposes, I will say only that we humans seem to be messing up things for the bees. Did you know that some commercial apiaries feed their honeybees a junk food diet of high fructose corn syrup instead of the nectar from flowers? The honey produced by these poor bees basically is reprocessed high fructose corn syrup.

En route to the beekeeping class, the Wrangler and I had discussed the medicinal aspects of lavender while mulling over my lavender farm plans. During the class, the apiarist briefly touched on the antibacterial and antiseptic properties of honey. I hadn't given much thought to the symbiosis of lavender and honey! From cultivation to purpose, they seem to be a perfect match...the bee's knees, if you will.