Bee-yoo-tiful

Ah, bees. Aside from the stinger, what's not to like? They pollinate, they make honey, they're striped. And, oh the honey. We had Dan and Terri Dodge in the store, last week, from Double D's Bs. They bottle different flavors of honey and also have created a skin care line that uses all natural ingredients, including honey. They keep hives here in Beloit and also in a rural area near town; they try not to move the bees too much, so as not to disturb the hives, but also so they can keep track of what pollen is making which flavor.

We tasted: linden (from the trees that line Grand street outside the store--how local is that!?!), clover (the most common flavor of honey), wildflower (my favorite--a bit clearer and more "flowery" than the clover), cranberry (a bit richer and green-tasting) and buckwheat (which was a beautiful dark brown and tasted a bit like sorghum, good for cooking and stir-fries) . They also had a jar of slightly crystallized "whipped" honey--I could eat that by the spoonful, and honey in the wax comb.

They also brought a chunk of hive, with the queen in it. She was industriously moving throughout the comb, laying eggs (1500 per day) as she went. Terri pointed out that the other bees move away as she comes by--"make way for the queen!" I think all the clamoring bees freaked Eamonn out, and he refused to taste the honey at all, despite lots of yummy noises made by his parents. He eventually was lured back and now refers back to the honey, and how much he loves it, on a regular basis.

I learned:
-Don't pull the first dandelions of the season, if you can help it. They are the first flowers to appear with both pollen and nectar in them, and the hungry bees need the calories to get up and running after winter.

-Colony Collapse doesn't tend to hit small hive owners like it does the larger beekeepers. The industrial keepers drive huge truckloads of bees around the country to pollinate cash crops; this traveling stresses the bees and also puts them in contact with bees from other parts of the country that may already be infected. Like everything else, keeping things small and local tends to be a bit safer and healthier.

-Some of the possible causes of colony collapse include disease, stress and exposure to pesticides. Cell phone tower (same frequency that bees communicate) and aliens (seriously) have been disproven. Aliens?

-Eating raw honey (unfiltered with bits of wax and insect parts in it) does seem to help people with intense pollen allergies. Terri says some local doctors have recommended Double DsBs to patients.

-It is most likely that Albert Einstein did NOT say that if bees disappeared from the face of the earth, mankind would only have four years left. However, the point is a good one...think of how effective a bee-based system of pollination works (what machine could individually dust every single flower of a plant-)-no bees (or bumble bees or black flies) would be catastrophic for our agriculture. No bees, no food chain. Think about that while you slurp down a spoonful of whipped honey.