ODE TO THE HONEY BEE: A Look at the History of Bees, Honey and Humans

BY MICHELE D. BAKER

It’s an iconic summer image: from a clear blue sky, a brilliant beam of hot sunshine flashes briefly on a golden honey bee buzzing its way across the backyard. The heady scent of roses in full bloom floats upon the air as she stops briefly to forage in the hollow of a crimson Knockout, burrowing deep into the rich and fragrant petals to reach the nectar at the center. The patch of snow-white daylilies in the sideyard is next, and the bee emerges, her body glistening with thousands of tiny pollen crystals. She visits a few more blossoms, gathering nectar and leaving behind pollen, before resuming her journey home to the hive, where tens of thousands of her sisters—and a few brothers—await her return with buzzing anticipation.

ANCIENT CONNECTIONS

Since ancient times, humans and honey bees have existed in sweet harmony.

For at least 4,500 years, Egyptian beekeepers have made hives out of clay or mud pipes stacked in pyramids. These hives were regularly moved, allowing the bees to pollinate whatever flowers were in season. Special rafts moved the hives up and down the river, so the bees traveled the whole length of Egypt. (This tradition continues into the present day.)

Honey was important to all socioeconomic classes and in almost every aspect of life in ancient Egypt, indicating that it must have been produced on a large scale. Honey was used for everything from sweetening food to dressing wounds to paying taxes. A marriage contract has been found which states, “I take thee to wife... and promise to deliver yearly twelve jars of honey.” It was also exacted as a tribute—jars of honey were paid each year by conquered Syrian tribesmen to Pharaoh Thothmes II, according to PlanetBee.org.

Honey also took center stage in religious life. The bee was a symbol of royalty, and the bee hieroglyph was a symbol of the pharaoh of lower Egypt. During a ceremony known as the “Opening of the Mouth,” priests placed honey into the mouth of a statue of a god—or the king or other great noble. Egyptians may have even believed that the soul of a man—his “Ka,” the part which continues after death—took the form of a bee. The Book of “Am-Tuat” (“the Otherworld”) compares the voices of souls to the hum of bees.

An ancient creation myth contained in the Salt Magical Papyrus says that bees were created from the tears of the Sun god Ra, creator of the earth and the sea:

“When Ra weeps again, the water which flows from his eyes upon the ground turns into working bees. They work in flowers and trees of every kind, and wax and honey come into being.”

CELEBRATED IN WORD AND SONG

The enduring human-bee relationship has also been a popular metaphor for artists throughout time. The Bible describes a good and spacious land as “flowing with milk and honey” and describes a man who knows right from wrong as one who, “will eat curds and honey.” Proverbs 16:24 says, “gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”

Honey is celebrated as a “gold standard” in song as well. Johnny Cash drawls, “I will bring you honey from the bee tree in the meadow,” (“Cause I Love You”), and Van Morrison says of his woman, “She’s as sweet as Tupelo honey” (“Tupelo Honey”). The Beatles also chose to compare a lover’s kiss to the

sweet syrup in the song “A Taste of Honey.”

Bees, beekeeping and honey are referenced in thousands of novels throughout the ages, and poet Emily Dickinson even composed an ode to the bee in her poem “The Bee.”

VITAL TO HUMAN SURVIVAL

But the golden honey bee is also an integral part of the food chain. Almost 90% of plants on earth rely on pollinators to reproduce. Pollinators transport pollen from one flower to another, allowing plants to produce fruit. (Technically, anything with seeds on the inside—like avocados, cucumbers, green beans and tomatoes—is actually a fruit.)

About 200,000 different species of animals around the world act as pollinators, including birds, bats, flies, beetles, butterflies, moths and bees. Pollinators allow 180,000 different plant species to survive, grow and produce food for thousands of animal species, including humans. (They also pollinate wild and native plants, sustaining fields, marshes and forests, which in turn anchor lakes, rivers and streams. So, pollinators pretty much ensure the whole chain works.)

Honey bees are among the most numerous and efficient pollinator species. The average honey bee visits more than 2,000 flowers in a day, so having a healthy bee population can greatly increase the chances of a plant producing a fruit or vegetable.

Honey bees are the species most commonly used as commercial pollinators in the U.S. Fully one-third of the U.S. diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants— more, if you consider “downstream effects” such as meat and milk from cows that eat bee-pollinated plants—and honey bees are responsible for an impressive 80 percent of that process. In short, bees are responsible for every third bite you eat.

BEEKEEPING 101

Jerel Levanway is a hobby beekeeper. He keeps his hives on a quiet street in a subdivision smack dab in the middle of north Jackson. His six boxes (“hives”) will soon grow to eight when he picks up a swarm he managed to trap nearby.

“Sometimes, a bee swarm will take up residence in a hollow tree or a natural cavity where you can’t get to it,” he says. “In this case, I put out a swarm trap to give the bees a nice place to move into.”

Bees sometimes swarm when the hive gets too crowded. “The worker bees—all female—will quit feeding the queen, so she loses weight and is able to fly,” he explains. “About half the bees leave the hive and go searching for a less crowded ‘apartment building’ to move into.”

When Levanway brings home his new swarm, he’ll simply put the box into the existing stacks, and the bees will automatically reorient themselves the next

Honey Gelato

By Pastry Chef Leigh Burrow

• 2 ½ cup milk • 1 ½ cup heavy cream • ½ cup sugar • ½ cup honey • 10 egg yolks • ½ tsp salt

1. Make an ice bath by filling a large bowl with ice water and sitting a smaller bowl on top of it. Set aside. Have a candy thermometer ready. 2. Heat milk, cream, sugar and honey just before boiling. 3. Temper warm liquid into the beaten egg yolks and salt. (Tempering is slowly pouring hot liquid into eggs while constantly whisking to combine the two without cooking the eggs.) Return mixture to saucepan and stir constantly until you reach 185°. Pour mixture into the small bowl of the ice bath and stir until mixture reaches room temperature. 4. Put in container and chill in refrigerator.

Follow manufacturer’s directions on your ice cream maker to process into deliciously rich honey gelato.

Brown Butter Financiers

By Pastry Chef Leigh Burrow

• 2 sticks + 2 tbsp butter • 1 ½ cup sugar • ½ vanilla bean • ¾ cup all-purpose flour • 1 ¼ cup firmly packed almond flour • 7 egg whites, room temperature • 1/8 cup honey • 1 tsp of orange zest, or 1/3 tsp extract

1. Pinch of cardamom 2. Brown butter with vanilla bean. Strain over honey and set aside to cool. 3. Mix dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer.

Add egg whites and stir just until combined.

Scrape sides of the bowl and add cooled butter/ honey. Mix until just combined. 4. Chill batter in fridge for at least 2 hours. Pour or pipe into well-greased mini muffin pans. (Silicone molds work, too.) 5. Bake for 17 to 20 minutes at 375° until brown and the signature financier “crack” appears on the top. Serve with honey gelato.

time they fly out. “Somehow, they know where the new hive is and which specific box is theirs,” finishes Levanway.

Bees are very social creatures and communicate in several ways. The queen uses pheromones to “set the tone” of the hive, and the bees talk to each other using those chemicals. Bees also give each other information about the location of new flower patches through dancing. “Dancing shows direction and distance to food, nectar and pollen,” says Levanway.

WHY DO BEES MAKE HONEY?

Honey bees collect nectar to create honey and store it as food inside the hive.

“Honey is the winter fuel for flights to collect more nectar,” says Levanway. “Bees use up lots of energy in winter whirring their wings to keep the queen and the hive warm.” Lucky for us, honey bees make more honey than the colony needs, so beekeepers can harvest the excess, which they bottle.

Honey starts as flower nectar collected by bees, which gets broken down into simple sugars stored inside the honeycomb. The design of the honeycomb and constant fanning of the bees’ wings causes evaporation, creating sweet liquid honey. A hive will produce about 55 pounds of surplus honey each year.

“We harvest it by removing the honeycomb frames from the box and scraping off the wax cap that bees make to seal off honey in each cell,” Levanway continues. Once the caps are removed, the frames are placed in an extractor, a centrifuge that spins the frames, forcing honey out of the comb.

After the honey is extracted, it’s strained to remove impurities, bottled and labeled for sale. “Our little collection of hives here in Jackson produces about 60 to 80 gallons each year,” says Levanway. “We sell it in pint and quart bottles under the name ‘Roscoe’s Yummy Honey,’ and it goes fast.”

HALF A MILLION BEES

Levanway’s eight boxes of hives collectively house nearly half a million bees. “Each hive contains about 50,000 to 60,000 sterile female worker bees, a few hundred male drones, and a single fertile female, the queen,” states Levanway.

Levanway’s honey harvesting is a small hobby endeavor, but big-scale beekeeping operations manage their hives with scientific precision. “They mark the queens with a special paint pen that is standardized across the industry. This lets the beekeepers know how old each queen is.”

A queen bee’s only job is to produce eggs to grow into more bees. Worker bees collect nectar to form honey and a more concentrated form of nutrition called royal jelly, which they feed to larvae and the queen. She will produce for about three years and then die. The hive can create a new queen by continuing to feed one female larva large amounts of royal jelly, which triggers the development of viable ovaries in a queen.

“The queen dictates the yearly cycle of the hive,” says Levanway. “In the spring and summer, she produces a lot of eggs which grow into honey bees to support the hive. In the winter, she produces fewer eggs—and therefore fewer bees who need food—and they feed on the stored honey.”

SWEET, STICKY AND DELICIOUS: 300 KINDS OF HONEY

The National Honey Board (www. honey.com) is chock-full of facts about honey and bees. For instance, did you know there are 300 types of honey in the U.S. alone, each originating from a different floral source? Shades range from light golden (mild) to dark amber, which has a deep, almost molasses flavor. In fact, the various subtle flavors of honey can be compared to wines, as flowers, fruits and other ingredients vary the taste of each unique honey.

Honey made from the nectar of the orange blossom has a slightly fruity taste; while honey from alfalfa produces a light, floral honey. Nectar gathered from avocado plants produces a dark, amber honey with a velvety texture, and blueberry honey has an aroma of green leaves with a touch of lemon that is moderately fruity.

“Bees are like us,” continues Levanway. “They have—and need—a varied diet of lots of different kinds of flowers to make tasty honey.”

HONEY’S SWEET BENEFITS

Honey has literally hundreds of uses, and there are almost as many benefits. Honey is antibacterial, antifungal and has anti-inflammatory properties—studies suggest that honey offers considerable benefits in the natural and safe treatment of chronic wounds, ulcers, burns and some types of dermatitis.

Research has shown that honey contains a wide array of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and antioxidants. Flavonoids and phenolic acids, which act as antioxidants, are found in honey. The amount and type of these compounds depend largely on the floral source.

Honey can be used as a sweetener for those people trying to cut down on processed white sugar. (Honey is still sugar, but its combination of glucose and fructose is lower on the glycemic index.)

Honey is a natural cough suppressant—think back to your grandmother’s lemon and honey cure for cough and colds—and numerous anecdotal reports suggest eating a teaspoon of local honey daily provides allergy relief.

HONEY BEE DECLINE & HOW YOU CAN HELP

Despite their ancient symbolism, critical role in food production and their contributions to a sweeter diet, the honey industry—and honey bees themselves— face many challenges, including hive loss, drought, colony collapse due to varroa mites and shrinking forage areas.

HERE ARE A FEW WAYS YOU CAN HELP THE HONEY BEES:

Plant bee-friendly flowers and flowering herbs in your garden and yard—in Mississippi that means Red Buckeye, Buttonbush, Sweetleaf, Wild Onion, Butterfly Weed, prickly pear, Mountain Mint, Ironweed, Passion Flower vines and Trumpetcreeper vines.

Reduce or stop the use of pesticides to treat your lawn or garden while flowers are in bloom.

Put out a shallow basin of fresh drinking water with marbles or rocks in it for the bees.

Support beekeepers by purchasing and eating local honey, such as Jackson’s Pennington Farms and Bee Tree Meadows.

ONE FINAL BUZZ

These ancient insects inhabit a beautiful place in the human world. Simultaneously they evoke symbols of long-ago Egypt, provide an invaluable role in food production, share the sweet bounty of their labors and remind us to cooperate and communicate.

We celebrate them in verse and song, emulate their strong hexagonal shapes in our industry, and watch with longing as they wallow about in rose petals. They represent abundance, the bounty of the harvest and high summer. As Hindu mystic Ramakrishna says, “When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.” Not bad for a humble honey bee. edm

11 “Un-Bee-lievable” Things About Bees & Honey

• Bees have 4 wings, 5 eyes and 6 legs • Apis mellifera (western honey bee) is 30 million years old • A pot of still-edible honey from 1325 B.C. was found in King Tut’s tomb • Put honey on minor scrapes and burns (it’s antimicrobial and antiseptic) • A queen bee will lay over 800,000 eggs in her lifetime • 99% of a hive is female: queen bee + all worker bees (drones are male) • Bees fly about 12-15 mph • Bees travel 55,000 miles to collect nectar from 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey • Honey bees carry pollen in a “corbicula” or

“pollen basket” on their back legs • In her 6-week lifetime, a honey bee will make about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey • Honey bees sleep 5-8 hours a night