Reprinted from a Readers Digest article by Stephanie Gray:

1) Happy World Bee Day! May 20 was chosen because it's also the birthday of the pioneer of modern beekeeping, Anton Jansa of 18th century Slovenia. Bee's are well worth celebrating: They polinate 35% of the worlds food crops, including 75% of the fruits, vegetables and nuts grown ion the US. And a single bee visits as many as 5,000 flowers a day, busy indeed!

2) The buzzing beings we call bees comprise 20,000 different species, Only 8 of which produce honey. And honey might lose some of it's sweetness for you once you know what it is: nectar that honey bee's have repeated regurgitated and dehydrated. It's not just people that stock up on the stuff. Bees subsist on honey during the winter when they can't forage.

3) During it's lifetime, one bee will create only about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. So that 12 ounce jar in the pantry equates to the life work of 864 bees. To produce 1 lb of honey, a colony needs to visit about 2 million flowers!

4) It may sound like something out of the "Lord of the Rings" But rare Elvish honey gets extracted not form a hive, but from the walls of caves in NE Turkey. In Turkish, this elixir is called "Peri Bali", which translates to "Fairy honey or Elf honey". Honey harvested from this region is said to be rich in minerals, and at more than $150 an ounce, it's among the worlds most expensive.

5) Know anyone named Melissa? The name comes from the Greek for "Honeybee". According to one version of a story from Greek mythology, Melissa was a nymph who learned about the many uses of honey from the bees themselves. When she nursed baby Zeus, rather than milk, She gave him "Nectar of the Gods" , honey.

6) We all knw beeswax is in candles and lip balm, but it appears in more places too, such as food wraps and cough syrup. Propolis or "Bee Glue", a sticky mix of beeswax, saliva, and tree sap, finds it's way into personal care products thanks to it's antiseptic, anti-inflammatory properties. Another bee byproduct, Royal jelly, can ease the symptoms of PMS and menopause.

More to follow:

Now I’ve GOT to try Fairy Honey!!! Great post!!

The caragana is blooming at the house. I can hear bees in it full time 10 yards away. They are coming from hives a mile north of the house. We let the dandelions grow too and I saw four honey bees in a six inch area today. I keep trying to get someone to put hives across the road from the house. I like having them around.

7) The Queen bee doesn't rule the hive as you might think, unlike "Queen Bees" in high schools across America. The literal queen's job is to lay eggs (as many as 1,500 a day) while workers clean and feed her-and even predigest her food. Without their constant care, the queen would die. And when her time does eventually come, her death is hardly dignified. As she nears the end of her life, the worker bees raise a new queen, which stings the old queen to death before taking over.

80 Youi ay haver heard that when a bee stings you, it dies. But this is only true for honeybees. Other bees, including Bumblebees and carpenter bees, can sting multiple times. In 1962, in what had to be one of the worst days of his life, a man in Zimbabwe survived getting stung more than 2,000 times! Roughly 500 bee species have no stingers at all. To defend themselves they bite.

9) With 11 million followers on Tick Tock, Erika Thompson of Texas Beeworks may be the queen of beekeeping. She first went viral in 2020 after posting a video in which she handles a massive swarm without any protective gear. Today in the US, there are 125,000 beekeepers and counting. or country is also home to 3 million bee colony's.

10) Fewer than 8% of Americans are allergic to bee stings, but it's still a common fear. Even Elephants are terrified of bees. They will try to shoo them away and won't go near trees with beehives in them. Researchers in Africa use beehives, as well as "Buzz Boxes" that emit the sound of bees to deter elephants from raiding crops and residential areas.

11) Last May, a swarm of bees landed on the wing of a Delta Air Lines plane parked in Houston, delaying it's departure for hours. In the spring, growing bee colony's fly in swarms looking for larger homes. They fly about a mile at a time, stopping to rest in open spaces, like airports- Many of which use "pollinator Friendly Practices" to protect bees- and their staffs.

12) Bees can detect odors in parts per Trillion, (think a grain of sand in an Olympic swimming pool). This makes them useful in locating land mines, such as those buried in the Balkans during the 1990's Yugoslav wars. Researchers train bees to associate the smell of explosives with a sugar solution, then they release them ion the field. The bees then cluster where landmines are buried. Lucky for them, they're far too light to trigger an explosion.

13) Campaigns to "Save the Honeybees" often target honeybees, but they're relatively healthy. While the last few years have seen the highest death rates on record, honeybee colony's are up more than 80% globally since the 1960's. many native bee species on the other hand, such as Bumblebees, carpenter bees, and blue orchard bees are at risk of extinction because of pesticides and the effects of climate change. Filling your backyard with native plants and wildflowers are a great way to help the populations of these tiny pollinators.

Cliff notes BB,,,,, ya know I’m simple……

x

Had a call about a swarm tonight. The swarm went past the homeowners doorbell camera and set it off. She had a great video of it. They landed up near the soffit of the house. Number 13 for the season.

Going past door…