Honey & Bees

If you love peaches and apples and honey and eating in general, bees are essential. Apparently the reason why we are loosing our bee population is complex, however, weed killers and other chemicals are a large contributor. I beg you, please do not use chemical weed killers. We are literally killing ourselves with chemicals. Remember, you are what you eat. If you use chemical weed killer, it gets into the water supply and the soil used to grow food and affects our whole community. We are a community of farms and gorgeous produce and I'm sure you want to do whatever you can to keep our community beautiful and thriving. Ok, I'm stepping down from my soapbox.

While I am interested in learning how to keep bees, the reality is a long way off. I love honey though. I really rely on it in the Spring to help me get through the worst of allergy season. The bees produce an antibody to my allergens and eating raw honey gives me those antibodies in the most delicious way possible. We are blessed with many great bee keepers in this area. Honey has such a complex depth of flavor and it varies depending on where the bees got the pollen. So each "batch" of honey is different and unique. To me, that's a very cool thing. I love Buckingham Valley Honey, available in many of our local farm markets, but there are other local producers as well. Honey is great in everything, but I love to just drizzle it on things like toast, scones, pancakes, french toast, yogurt, dark chocolate, the list goes on. By drizzling it on food, I feel I can really enjoy the flavor versus using it as a sugar substitute.

Since I won't be a beekeeper anytime soon, I wondered what I could do to help the bees. So I purchased a bee hotel from Bucks Country Gardens and nailed it to a tree in my yard. It will give the bees that live in my backyard garden a place to give birth and rest etc. In addition, to naturally improve my raised bed garden soil, this Spring I will be planting a cover crop of oats and peas. The peas add necessary nitrogen to the soil and the oats add green manure. This will also give the bees, honey and other types, pollen from the pretty little flowers as well. By August my soil will be ready for me to plant winter squashes, swiss chard, and other cold weather crops. So I'm trying to do my part with those two small things - the bee hotel and the cover crop - to participate and strengthen a healthy environment. If you don't have a small garden, please plant flowers for the bees in pots and lanscaping beds. Anything you can do and stop doing will be a big help. And purchasing local honey will not only stoke our local economy and keep a beekeeper in business, but it will also benefit your health. Here's to that! Cheers!

P.S. Here are two articles with more information:

Bee population decline: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-complex-worldwide-bee-declines.html

Bee hotel: http://www.foxleas.com/make-a-bee-hotel.asp