Learn something fascinating everyday : Honey Bees

As soon as I started making my raised vegetable boxes on the farm this year, I had a new curious little garden helper, a Honey Bee. This little Honey Bee would hang around close by watching me build the boxes and plant the veggie plants. After I'd finish a box and plant the veggies in that box he would go around to every plant checking them out but never really landed on them, not even the tomato plants that had open flowers on them. When he was done buzzing happily around me and my Vegetables he would leave and show back up the very next time I went out to do more planting, repeating the same little routine and always by himself.

I welcomed the little Honey Bee's attention just like I welcome the attention from Big Ben and any other little garden helpers that may come around. In a slightly off kilter way, the Honey bees' seemingly pleased approval made me feel like I was doing everything right in the garden.

Here are a couple of interesting facts that I have learned about the Honey Bee over the years.

How can you tell when your Honey bees are Happy?

Well according to some Bee Keepers, When the Honey Bees are happy they emanate a Lemon like scent throughout the hive and within close proximity to the hive. If the Bees are unhappy or angry they emanate a Banana like scent which aids as a warning before an attack on predators.

How is Honey classified?

Honey is classified by the flowers that the Bees pollinate most. If the honey at your local grocer is labeled clover honey, then the bees that made that honey primarily pollinated clover fields.
There are other types of Honey as well, like orange and apple blossom Honey where the bees primarily pollinated an orchard of either Orange or Apple trees. There is also what they call wildflower Honey which comes from the bees having a large array of wild flowers to pollinate from where one flower is not more prevalent than the others.

The awesome Honey Bee

I believe that Albert Einstein once said " If the Honey bee was to ever disappear, within 4 years the human race would cease to exist."  and he was right. We need the Honey Bees to pollinate the trees, flowers, vegetable plants, herb gardens, even the grass that feed our cattle, pigs, chickens, and horses. Sadly those beautiful Honey Bees are dying and their numbers are dwindling. Bee keepers and bee farmers will tell you that they've seen whole colonies of  bees wiped-out unexpectedly and without explanation. In regards to some of the commercial Bee farmers who drive whole hives to different parts of the country, it is my belief that some of their bees suffer from a degree of stress due to being shipped and from pollenating areas that those particular honey bees are not natives of. What about our "local" Honey bees? well here's the problem with our local bees, as well as commercial bees, Pesticides. Pesticides are everywhere, we use them in and around our homes, some commercial farmers use them on their crops, we in Louisiana even have local agencies that come out and spray pesticides for mosquitos. We all know that pesticides are harmful not only to us but to the environment, but no one really stops and thinks what would happen if honey bees disappeared because of pesticides. One of the things I'd like to do on my farm at some point is have a Bee keeper come out and place a couple of honey bee colonies on the farm. I have a couple reasons for this, 1) so that the Bees can help pollinate my fruits and veggies,  2) to help  the colonies grow bigger and produce more colonies, 3) because I love watching the Honey bees work, 4) hopefully the bee keeper will allow us to keep some of the honey the Bees produce. Believe it or not Honey from Local bees have some amazing health benefits. If you must use pesticides, please be mindful of our sweet amazing little honey bees and only use natural pesticides. A natural pesticides would be using Lady bugs to keep aphids off your herbs and plants, or burn fresh lavender to keep mosquitos away. Believe it or not the Lavender works way better than citronella on those little blood suckers.
In short, Honey bees are our life blood and without them we'd cease to exist.