In the brand new August edition of Bon Appetit magazine, I read about a New Yorker who is involved with bee keeping. She does it right in Manhattan, on the rooftop of an apartment building. I learned quite a bit from the article, including the fact that the reason for the biggest demise of the honey bee, during the 1990’s was due to the varroa-mite, a pest that loves the honey bee’s blood, and then again in the late 2007-2008 due to a mysterious disease. It almost wiped out the bees and thanks to many local farmers, bee keepers and individuals giving bee keeping a try, they are assisting these tiny creatures to produce honey and pollinating our planet.
I remember my eldest sister telling me that she had read that Einstein said when the bees disappear, we have four years until our own collapse or demise. Not a pleasant thought at all and coincidentally, four years would be the year 2012. It behooves us to support bee keepers and even for some of us to investigate how we may either become bee keepers ourselves, like amybyrd21 has done, or to join groups that are into doing this, and offer some help or financial assistance. We are all doing the planet a favor in this. Here is a photo I took of page 80, to show you how beautiful and busy these bees are.
It takes one bee his whole life to produce only 1/12 of a teaspoon of golden honey. What a sweet little bee. And that one hive can produce 150 pounds of honey in a summer! Even the White House pastry chef Bill Yosses, uses honey in many recipes and it is produced by bees on the W.H. lawn; 140 pounds to be precise.
Check the internet for a Bee Association in your area, to see what you can do to help keep the bees alive, happy and making honey.