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BUZZWORTHY ☀ Temperatures inside a hive can reach 91 degrees, which helps remove moisture from the nectar. — Livescience.com ☀ Worker bees are all female and are all offspring of the queen. But there are males in the hive called drones. Drones fly off to reproduce with other young queens who will start a new colony. — Arizona State University’s “Ask a Biologist” ☀ A single bee can bring back a pollen load (to the hive) that weighs about 35 percent of the bee’s body weight. — University crop requires a total of around 80 billion insects in 1.7 million hives altogether. — Select Harvest USA ☀ Honeybees are not native to the New World; they were brought here from Europe in the 1500s and 1600s by colonists. — U.S. Department of Agriculture ☀ Honey can range in color from clear white to dark amber, “depending on its mineral content and floral source. Light colored honey typically has a mild flavor, while dark colored honey is usually stronger.” — Alfa Farmers ☀ Honey contains 64 calories per tablespoon. ☀ Crystalized honey is perfectly fine to consume and can quickly return to its liquid state. Just place the honey jar into a pot of hot water and stir until the crystals dissolve. ☀ Louisiana produced 2.15 million pounds of honey in 2021. ☀ The western or European of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences ☀ It takes approximately two hives’ worth of bees to pollinate every acre of almonds trees, meaning California’s almond

FROM HIVE TO JAR Beekeepers have been harvesting honey from hives for centuries. Each hive, on average, produces about 55 pounds of surplus honey per year, according to the National Honey Board. “Beekeepers harvest it by collecting the honeycomb frames and scraping off the wax cap that bees make to seal off honey in each cell. Once the caps are removed, the frames are placed in an extractor, a centrifuge that spins the frames, forcing honey out of the comb,” the Honey Board says. Once the honey is extracted from the comb, commercial bottlers strain it to remove any bee bits (legs, wings, wax and other things you don’t want in your cup of tea). “After straining, it’s time to bottle, label, and bring it to you,” the National Honey Board says. “It doesn’t matter if the container is glass or plastic, or if the honey is purchased at the grocery store or farmers’ market. If the ingredient label says ‘pure honey,’ nothing was added from bee to hive to bottle.” SO WHY DOESN’T HONEY SPOIL? Honey has very little moisture content, and bacteria needs water to survive. Keeping the hive dry is key, and bees make sure of that. By flapping their wings inside the hive, they help to evaporate the nectar. “The sticky goo starts out as flower nectar, containing about 60% water,” McGill University reports. “Bees add enzymes that break down the complex carbohydrates to simple sugars and then store the nectar in honeycombs where the water content is reduced to about 18% through evaporation.” Another key to honey’s longevity? Bees have an enzyme that mixes with the nectar to make hydrogen peroxide, helping to make honey antibacterial, according to the National Library of Medicine. IMPORTANCE OF POLLINATORS Enjoying a spoonful of honey in your yogurt isn’t the only way that humans benefit from bees’ hard work. Honeybees pollinate nearly 80% of all flowering plants, including more than 130 types of fruits and vegeta bles, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which estimates one out of every three bites of food is created with the help of pollinators.

And the western honeybee Apis mellifera (also called the European honeybee) is the main species responsible for bee pollina tion worldwide, according to the National Library of Medicine. So, if we want a healthy dinner menu, we need bees. In recent years, alarm bells have been sounding about the health of bee popula tions, both in the United States and around the globe, with hives threatened by parasites, pests, poor nutrition, pesticides, climate change and Colony Collapse Disorder. “Colony Collapse Disorder is the phenom enon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food, and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees and the queen,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency. “Once thought to pose a major long-term threat to bees, reported cases of CCD have declined substantially over the last five years.” Still, beekeepers and farmers remain concerned — and vigilant — to threats to the bee population. “Beekeepers across the United States lost 45.5% of their managed honey bee colonies from April 2020 to April 2021,” according to Auburn University’s reporting on a nationwide survey conducted by the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership. “These losses mark the second highest loss rate the survey has recorded since it began in 2006.” Because of the threats to bees, it’s become an all-hands-on-deck effort to figure out the best ways to keep the hives healthy. Beekeepers, agricultural agencies and researchers, Auburn says, “have been working together to understand why and develop best management practices.”

honeybee ( Apis mellifera ) is the state agricultural insect of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

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