Historical Honeybees

I was at Pioneer Day at Granville Wells Elementary today, and I wanted to share some more history about honeybees.

Since the earliest days of civilization, honeybees have been an important part of history! 

The Egyptians kept honey bees 3-5,000 years ago in the Nile River Valley.  This very advanced civilization contributed several key ideas to modern beekeepers; they kept the honeybees in pots, used smoke to calm the bees,  and used rafts to move hives to different nectar flows (we use hives for bee homes and semi trucks instead of rafts, but these concepts are still used today!).  The bee was a symbol of royalty and kingship, and in tombs of high-ranking officials, the Egyptians often left honey and other food for the afterlife. 

In more recent times, Napoleon (a French leader in the late 1700's) used honeybees as one of the symbols of his empire.  He wasn't the first to use this idea, or the last.  Many people have admired the honeybee's work ethic ("busy as a bee")!  This had led to the honeybee's appearance on official state seals and the first money of the United States. 

Utah is the BEEHIVE STATE, and has a skep in the middle of their state seal and flag.  A skep was an early beehive, usually woven out of straw or waxed rope.  It was used until the mid-1800's.  Learn more about why Utah is the beehive state here. 

In the 1850's, beekeeping changed forever with some new inventions.  But that is a story for a different time!

"Bee in the Know":  The earliest record of humans collecting honey from wild colonies or "honey hunting" is from 7000 BC (or 9,000 years ago!)

Honey- That's all it is!

Honey.  Pure and Simple.

Honey doesn't have anything added to it.  Let's look at how honeybees make honey and how it gets to the bear-shaped bottle in your cabinets. 

Step 1: Foraging honeybees go to the flowers, where they suck nectar through their proboscis (straw-like tongue) into their honey stomach (we just have one stomach- honeybees have two).  The nectar is very watery.

Step 2:  In their honey stomach, special ingredients called enzymes are added.  This officially makes it into HONEY! 

Step 3:  When they bring it back to the hive, the worker bees put the honey into a hexagon cell made out of wax.
Step 4:  With their wings, the worker bees inside the hive fan the honey, removing most of the water so it turns out sticky and thick.

Step 5:  When the honey is ready, they cap it over with wax for storage until the winter. 

That's the end of the honeybees' job.  Beekeepers take extra honey that the bees don't need for the winter.  This process is called extracting.

Step 1: Beekeepers cut off the wax cappings.  These are saved for use in candles, chapstick, and crayons!

Step 2:  The frame of honey is then put into an extractor.  This basically looks like a large metal can with baskets hanging in it.

Step 3:  The honey spins to the outside of the extractor and drips to the bottom.  There is a honey gate at the bottom of the extractor that a beekeeper opens and the honey flows out.

Step 4:  The honey is filtered and bottled.

So there you have it!  Honey is straight from the honeybees to your shelf.

"Bee in the Know":  There are over 300 different varieties of honey in the United States (these come from the different flowers that the bees visit)

Beekeepers Who are as Busy as Their Bees

So, if bees are busy, beekeepers must be pretty busy too!  Some beekeepers only have a few hives, like me!  Others have thousands of beehives (in each beehive there might be about 60,000 honeybees!) and take care of them as their job.  So what does a beekeeper do? 

Beekeepers might take their hives from one part of the country to another, and have beehives for pollinating crops. For all of the different plants that need honeybee pollination, the beekeepers don't live in the right areas-  so they move their beehives.  The load up hives on the back of a semi truck, cover them with a net, and drive across the country to flowers that are in bloom.  In February, beekeepers take over half of the hives in the United States to the almond crop in California. 

Some beekeepers are MIGRATORY beekeepers.  They may have more than one home and travel with their honeybees during different parts of the year.  Usually, these beekeepers take their beehives to the southern part of the United States during the winter.

Are you as busy as a beekeeper??

"Bee in the Know":  There are around 2.5 million honeybee hives in the USA