Last night at the Fair, there was a bee keepers exhibit and Matt and I stopped for a minute to look at the bees.
I picked up a pamphlet and read some more about bees.
Did you know…
- honey is the only food made by insects that is consumed by humans.
- 1/3 of your diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants, and 80% of that is done by honey bees.
- Honey bees visit anywhere from 50 to 100 flowers each time they go out in search of nectar.
- Honey bees fly about 55,000 miles to make one pound of honey – that’s equal to 1 1/2 times around the world!
- The average honey bee makes just 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey during her lifetime.
- Honey has vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and amino acids.
According to this article, “The number of managed honey bee colonies has dropped from 5 million in the 1940s to only 2.5 million today. At the same time, the call for hives to supply pollination service has continued to climb.” Furthermore, “Beginning in October 2006, some beekeepers began reporting losses of 30-90 percent of their hives. While colony losses are not unexpected during winter weather, the magnitude of loss suffered by some beekeepers was highly unusual.”
Some good news though, according to this article. “Honey bee colony losses nationwide were approximately 29 percent from all causes from September 2008 to April 2009, according to a survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
This is less than the overall losses of about 36 percent from 2007 to 2008, and about 32 percent from 2006 to 2007, that have been reported in similar surveys.
"While the drop in losses is encouraging, losses of this magnitude are economically unsustainable for commercial beekeeping," said Jeff Pettis, research leader of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS).”
This article has a great list of way you can help save the honeybees including reducing your pesticide usage, buying local honey, adding plants to your garden to attract honey bees, and supporting laws to help local beekeepers.
For further reading about honey bees, here are a few other resources.
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