Let them Bee

Dear Miss T,

I might have married a bee keeper!

This past weekend we had our debut exposure to bee keeping, and I think Mr. P may have found a new future hobby. His coworker has three beehives and invited him to come experience the honey harvest for one of the hives. From just the one hive they retrieved 5 gallons of honey!! And that came from 2 boxes of four that the bees build their honeycomb in (the bottom two remain filled with honey for the bees themselves to feed on come wintertime). I came along, and definitely wore a little bee smock as well (I have never yet been stung, and I don't wish to change that anytime soon), and learned some fascinating-nearly-unbelievable-sci-fi-like facts about bees. Did you know that...

-all worker bees are female!?!?

-the male bees stay in the hive, are called drones, and have the life purpose of mating with the queen bee?

-bees will travel up to 3 miles in their roaming?

-the honey is flavored like the plants that the bees have been collecting from? (For example they gave us some honey from their last summer's harvest that had a slight mint taste)

-a queen bee is made because the worker bees feed a larvae "royal jelly" which essentially allows her ovaries to develop so genetically she ends up being different from all the other female bees?

I haven't researched these facts, so I am just repeating what was shared with me, so if any of these facts are a little off, just know I am capturing the essence of the bee experience. 

Honey has some fabulous health benefits though, and the wax makes great lip balm. I guess in the future you may be related to bee keepers. :)

-KK