How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103)

Beekeeping is shown in the art of ancient Egypt. But harvesting honey as a business wasn’t common until the 1800s. Early beekeepers had to destroy hives in order to get at the honey. The Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth is the father of modern beekeeping. In 1851, he perfected a wooden hive with removable frames. Mr. Langstroth came to understand that if a space were too narrow, bees would seal it up. If a space were too large, bees would attach honeycomb to it (fixed-comb hives). With the proper spacing (3/8 inch), bees would only build comb on Mr. Langstrorth’s removable frames.

Today, beekeepers do not earn money only from the honey they harvest. Many keepers rent out their bees to farmers. God made bees hairy for a reason. When honeybees visit blossoms to gather nectar, powdery pollen sticks to their hair. When they visit another plant, the powder rubs off, pollinating that plant so that it can produce fruit. In the United States, millions of bee colonies are “on the road” every year. Close to a million are used just to pollinate the almond trees of California each season. Moving bee colonies to rent in warmer states also keeps their honey production going year-round.

In the Hive

Queen: Each hive has one queen. She is the only female to lay eggs. The queen is larger and longer than other bees. 

Drones: Male bees without stingers are daddies to the queen’s baby bees. The 500-1000 drones do not forage for nectar. They are the first to be kicked out of the hive if food is scarce. 

Workers: A hive may have from 30,000 to 50,000 female bees that do not lay eggs. These workers collect sweet nectar from plants and bring it back to the hive to turn into honey. Workers live about one month.

Fun to Know:

• Honey is “bee spit,” sort of. Ok, that’s gross . . . but you’ll get over it. Worker bees collect nectar from flowers. They swallow the sweet liquid and then spit it back out. This gets the water out and thickens the nectar. It is honey when the water content is less than 20 percent.

• To work safely around their hives, beekeepers often use smokers. Actually, smoke doesn’t calm bees, it scares the daylights out of them. Instinct tells bees that a fire is coming. To prepare for abandoning their hive, bees gorge themselves with honey. As they are distracted and fill up on honey, they become sluggish and less likely to sting. Smokers are basically cans that hold smoldering fuel. Working a small bellows pushes the smoke out. Anything from green grass or weeds to damp cardboard can be burned to create smoke.

• A worker bee can produce only about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.

• Colonists brought the common honeybee, to the Americas. Indians called it the “White Man’s Fly.”

• Bees do not see the color red.

• Worker bees must forage millions of flowers for each pound of honey they make.

• Beeswax is produced by four pairs of glands on the underside of the worker’s abdomen.

• Bee wings stroke 11,500 times per minute. Bees will fan their wings to cool the hive when necessary.

• An average hive produces 80 pounds more honey than the bees need for their own use.

• The queen can lay up to 3,000 eggs in a day.