I'll be your honey bee.

We'll today was the day Brandon has waited for the past month and a half.  What started as a notion has turned into a month of saying, "Wow God is such an awesome creator" after learning so much about the honey bee- a creature that until a month ago I had looked at with fear when they were around and had little thought of the bug otherwise.  So the past month has been filled with Brandon talking (yelling) at elderly folks whose hearing is less than prime, but they are full of wisdom and the few and far between that call themselves beekeepers.  Honestly, it will be a dying practice- if some of us don't step in and learn from these folks. 

We have spent the last 2 saturdays taking a beekeeping class, the first class began with a 30 minute preview to a sermon from the Moody Institute and the film was from the 1950's.  We learned basic anatomy, characteristics, and life stages of the honey bee...this past saturday was filled with disease, pest, etc that make it so hard for the honey bee to thrive these days and the part we had waited for...Honey :)

So here are some of the things we have learned about the honey bee that is just amazing to us, and the beekeeping bug has well...bitten. haha.

•  The honeybee is responsible for producing one-third of the food that we consume yearly through pollination- if the honey bee goes extinct (which its populations decline annually- we will starve)

• When a full bottle of honey is turned upside-down an air bubble will go to the top. The faster that the air bubble rises the less pure the honey and the slower the more pure. Most if not all store bought honey when checked the air bubble will almost always go to the top without delay. If it takes only a second or two then you are the purchaser of a bottle containing 80% or more corn syrup and 20% or less honey! That equates to a plastic honey bear filled with a sweet soft drink.

• Fun food fact- An acre of Almonds trees without honeybees actively pollinating can produce 80 lbs of almonds. An acre of Almond trees that are deliberately pollinated with honeybees can produce over 3,000 lbs per acre.

Consider starting beekeeping yourself- You don't have to live in the country, or have tons of fields for  your bees to work-- and trust me I use to be scared of them, but the honey bee is really docile- the more folks there are take interest in the beekeeping, the better chance there is to keep this little dude around a little longer, and keep us fed as well.