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To Bee or Not to Bee

A LITTLE NECTAR, A LOT OF WORK Long before the golden liquid lands on store shelves, female worker bees (yep, just the females) fly out of the hive, landing on flowers, where they fill their “crops” or “honey stomachs” (a real term) with sugary nectar. Inside their bellies, the nectar is broken down into simple sugars. Once their bellies are full, they return to the hive where they then regurgitate the nectar. (As tempting as it might be, don’t call it bee vomit. Many apiculturists take issue with that term, pointing out that the bees are not digesting the nectar in the way that mammals digest our food.) After they spit up their nectar, it gets passed around the hive. “Each bee chews the nectar for around half an hour before passing it onto the next bee, slowly turning it into a syrup,” according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (a British registered wildlife charity). Once the honey is ready, the bees store it inside honeycomb cells. Making honey is no small task. “Bees will fly upwards of 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) to collect nectar and pollen from flowers,” according to Arizona State University’s “Ask a Biologist.” Bees don’t do all of this just for humans to sweeten their morning oatmeal. Honey is the primary food for bees and bee larvae. Pollen, which gets picked up on the bees’ legs and hair when they’re crawling around the flowers, also becomes a good source of protein for bee larvae back at the hive. But before they return home, the bees accom plish an important task in the food chain. All that buzzing around facilitates pollina tion, allowing the plants to produce fruit and seeds — leading to crops that end up in the produce aisles of your neighborhood Rouses, the perfect symbiotic relationship. (Isn’t Mother Nature fascinating!) Almond growers, especially, rely on bees for their crop. “In order for the almond flower to be fertilized, it has to be cross-pollinated with pollen from a different variety of tree,” according to Select Harvest USA. “Bees provide the perfect mechanism of transfer ring this pollen from the two or three varieties of almond trees that the typical farmer has in his orchard. And in order to create a single almond, an almond blossom needs as many as a dozen visits from bees.”

By Susan Langenhennig Granger

When planning for the afterlife, ancient Egyptians wanted to cover all their bases — even the need to satisfy a sweet tooth. So, they tucked pots of honey into the tombs of great pharaohs. W hen planning for the afterlife, ancient Egyptians wanted to cover all their bases — even the need to satisfy a sweet tooth. So, they tucked pots of honey into the tombs of great pharaohs. In 1922, when British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb, he unearthed more than 100 baskets filled with the remnants of food, including a ceramic jar that still had honey residue inside, according to National Geographic . As the story goes, some (fearless? crazy?) archae ologists even tasted it, and it was perfectly edible. In their quest for immortality, Egyptians turned to a remarkable product that truly has a nearly eternal shelf life: honey. The secret lies in its high sugar content, low water content and acidic pH. Naturally antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral, honey is truly one of the world’s most magical substances, used for centuries to brew beer, make wine, sweeten foods, heal wounds, embalm the dead, fight wrinkles and even help with upset stomachs. “The medicinal importance of honey has been documented in the world’s oldest medical literatures,” according to the National Library of Medicine. “Human use of honey is traced to some 8,000 years ago as depicted by Stone Age paintings. The ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans employed honey for wounds and diseases of the gut.” So just how do bees make this magical elixir? They’re busy.

50 ROUSES SUMMER 2023