It’s one thing to know about honeybees’ role in our lives—pollinating flowers and the plants that produce our food—as well as their populations declining, but it’s another thing to understand how a honeybee colony’s hive actually works because in its own way, a hive is an organism of sorts, with thousands of individual parts working…
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What many likely don’t know about honey is it takes “two million individual blossoms to produce one pound of honey,” says beekeeper Zac Browning, with each individual honeybee producing 1/12 of a teaspoon in its lifetime. With the planting of more row crops in states like North Dakota, Iowa, and so forth, producing that number…
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The impact the Manuka honey industry has made on New Zealand and the world is hard to believe, considering the Manuka bush was once thought of as some invasive species to be rid of back in the 1950s. It is now considered one of the most valuable niche products out there, with many rural communities…
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It takes a lot of work and dedication to be a beekeeper, especially in Texas—working in sweltering, summer temperatures in a protective beekeeping suit and lifting between 50-90 pounds of honeycomb all day. For former CIA operative turned beekeeper Tara Chapman, she’s proud to be the uncommon woman who works jobs not often filled by…
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Even those who work outside of the sciences know humans as a species are social creatures and that even before civilization, human beings lived in and moved in groups, likely due to it being the most adaptive thing for them to do in order to survive. And many complex species, as most people also know,…
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Vanilla-Manuka Honey Soft Serve Ice Cream It’s likely most have thought about how cool it might be to make your own ice cream, since nothing truly compares to the fresh taste of ice cream made right in your kitchen, with all the flavor intact and not lost after preservatives and production time have been added…
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In New Zealand, the birthplace of Manuka honey, the Maori, who are New Zealand’s indigenous people, make up roughly 16 percent of the island country’s population, and as a culture, they have been trying to grow their economy and branch it out into the world, as Maori Development Minister Te Ururoa Flavell aspires to do…
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It’s probably not hard to figure, but it’s well known that honeybees are important parts of our daily survival and function as a species, which is why so much focus has been placed on finding out what’s causing bees to decline and what we can do to ensure their various sub-species are not lost to…
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How Food Irradiation Can Make Honey Safer Given the panic and fear that comes from botulism, salmonella, and other diseases born of contaminated food, many food producers and distributors have had safety precautions put in place to protect themselves from lawsuits and the public from these diseases, whether it’s by pasteurizing milk, purifying water, and…
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As many beekeepers have learned, the state of North Dakota is one of the best habitats in the country for raising honeybees, and it’s why one in five bee colonies—about 250 billion bees—spend summer there, producing twice as much honey as any other state. “North Dakota is the last, best place in North America to…
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Upon retiring from the Army this past March, Sgt. 1st Class Ben Finch had the plan of expanding his vegetable farm at his Fort Polk home in Louisiana into a larger, commercial operation, and he’s discovered one of the best ways to do this is through honeybees and beekeeping. “Beekeeping looks like a natural way…
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Caribbean Burgers with Manuka Honey Pineapple Chutney If you’re looking for something unique for dinner or want to serve something special and different for Fourth of July this year, then these Caribbean Burgers with Manuka Honey Pineapple Chutney are a great place to start! Adding spice to the typical burgers we’re all used to, these…
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In Oakland, CA, there lives a father of four who’s a “bee rescuer” rather than a beekeeper because he is the one people call when displaced swarms of honeybees make nests in homes or populated places. Considering most fear bees, this man, Khaled Almaghafi, instead removes them calmly with a soft vacuum and transports them…
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For those who haven’t heard of varroa mites, they are small, destructive parasites known for their parasitic relationship with honeybees—more specifically, they’re known for their ability to devastate honeybee colonies and are a likely factor contributing to or are related to colony collapse disorder (CCD). Varroa mites, like all parasites, suck blood from honeybees at…
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It’s not an uncommon story that eventually a retiree decides to find a vocation that he or she does less for money and more for enjoyment. A Bemidji, MN man, Les Hiltz, who spent much of his adult life harvesting and caring for his own farm, has decided his retirement vocation would be what was…
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