We love the taste of honey—how each taste—each batch is subtly different. Interested in knowing how honey is even made, how best to appreciate it, or how you can help honey bees in your neighborhood? Sign up to take a private honey tasting experience guided by our Bee America honey sommelier with your friends or coworkers. The experience is virtual and designed to be not only delicious, but also fun-filled and educational. It’s a great way to reconnect everyone in your group or party through dynamic Q&A’s and interactive feedback while enjoying a selection of premium honeys and accompanying palate cleansers.
September is National Honey Month and it’s the perfect time of year to honor to pay homage to honey’s golden glory after just finishing our own bountiful harvest season at Bee America. While honey is not created by magic, its very existence is the result of a certainly remarkable process. As children are more likely to believe in magic than adults, they would not have any trouble having faith in the following equation:
Beautiful Flowers + Industrious Bees = Delicious Honey
Honey reflects the flowers from which it is produced, interpreted by the bees to make a unique and wonderful food. How wonderful for us that nectar from flowers and trees can actually be transformed by honey bees into Nature’s own sweetener. While nectar, which is honey’s raw ingredient, is made up of about 70% water, honey itself is only 17% water. How is that possible you may ask? It is the bees that tirelessly work to process the nectar and then remove the excess moisture from the nectar by rapidly fanning their wings over the open cells in the hive where it is stored.
A master beekeeper friend of ours once explained that our role as beekeepers is to get out of the way and let the bees produce one of Nature’s most amazing gifts. It doesn’t spoil, doesn’t need refrigeration, and it is just so good for you. Honey is one of the safest foods as most harmful bacteria cannot live in it for any length of time.
While some honey can be almost white in color, it is usually in shades of light amber (the mildest in flavor) to dark brown (the more robust in flavor). But honey’s many uses do not stop at the dinner table. It is so much more! It can be used in countless applications that fall under the general categories of healing and repairing the body, beautifying and pampering oneself and improving one’s fitness level.
In honor of National Honey Month, here are five surprising honey bee facts:
- A honey bee can fly up to 15 mph and beats its wings 12,000 beatsper minute.
- In her lifetime, a worker bee collects nectar that will makeonly 1/10th of a teaspoon of honey.
- It requires the dedicated efforts of approximately 1,000 worker bees to create one pound of honey.
- Bees fly the equivalent of more than twice around the earth to gather nectar that will make a pound of honey.
- The average lifespan of a honey bee during the nectar-gathering season is about six weeks.
