All Things Bees

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All Things Bees

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I have several articles of interest pertaining to bees, and may find more over time, so will just start a single thread to put them all in. A fascinating new journey has just begun in my life....

The History of Beekeeping

By Esther Elizabeth Suson (2020)

https://hankeringforhistory.com/the-his ... eekeeping/

The history of beekeeping is fascinating. We don’t know when humans first discovered the sweet taste of honey. We don’t even know when they first started to honey-gather. But we do know when they first started to intentionally cultivate bee colonies for the use of honey and wax.

The Oldest Bee
The oldest bee fossil was discovered in Myanmar. Science suggests that bee colonies started to grow and spread with the growth and spread of flowering plants. Bee pollination and flowering plants grew in tandem. Prior to this, the wind was the main sower of plant seed.

The History of Beekeeping in Egypt and Spain (6000-5000 B.C.E.)
The first human record of knowing or interacting with bees was found in La Cueva de la Araña (The Cave of the Spider) in the municipality of Bicorp, Valencia, Spain. In the cave drawing, a stylized human figure gathers honey while bees fly around and towards him.

The use of bees, honey, and beeswax in Egypt was more clearly defined. There was a job description called “Sealer of Honey.” Their pictures and paintings, a little more detailed than the Valencia cave drawings, showed how beekeepers would smoke hives (to calm bees) and draw out honey.

In Lower Egypt (Egypt at the lower part of the Nile according to the direction it flowed, which is actually farther north than Upper Egypt), the bee was the symbol of their country. Together with the sedge plant, it would symbolize both Upper and Lower Egypt. This was their symbol at least from 3100 B.C.E. onwards.

How were bee products used in Egypt?
Bees were domestically kept, but mainly for beeswax. When it came to honey, wild honey was gathered as much as cultivated honey was harvested. Honey was used for food, for adding taste to wine, and as an ingredient for medicine. An early papyrus, called the Smith and Ebers papyrus, shares how the antibacterial properties of honey were used for anointing wounds.

The beeswax was first used as an aid to seal jars and containers. It was also used for shipbuilding, being waterproof, and as an ingredient for mummification. Beeswax was not used for lighting or candles, as oil lamps were used for thousands of years in the North African and Middle Eastern areas. Less commonly, beeswax was molded into figurines of Egyptian deities.

The History of Beekeeping in China (1100 B.C.E.)
Oracle bones, the earliest records of writing in China, have a character which means bee or wasp (feng). Honey bees, specifically, were called mi-feng. Riverside farmers raised and managed bee colonies, and honey was used as part of stomach remedies and healthy food recommendations.

The industry was so developed that after a few hundred years, there were records of beehives, of techniques to domesticate wild bee colonies, and a thriving market for honey, beeswax, and other related products. Beeswax was made into candles as early as 200 B.C.E., before such a technique became known and popularized in Europe.

By 158 C.E., the first bee farm was registered. By the 1300s, there was a honey harvest festival every year in July. In the 1700s, books and scrolls on beekeeping had commercially emerged. Beekeepers were knowledgeable even about conditions that would negatively impact their bee colonies, and about how swarms of small insects could destroy them.

The History of Beekeeping in Ancient Greece and Rome (200 B.C.E.)
While we are not sure that the ancient Greeks practiced beekeeping (intentional cultivation of the colonies), we know they did study bees and their behavior. There were bees on their coins, bees in Aristotle’s History of Animals, and bees mentioned in their literature. We can assume that this knowledge was carried over into the next phase of civilization, the Roman Empire.

The Romans practiced beekeeping, which we know because of their writings. The writings were not only about bees and their behavior, but how to cultivate them as well. We also know from their writings that Romans built their artificial beehives from perishable materials, which explains why we can’t find very many today.

The main use of beekeeping was to gather honey for sweetening, especially in wine or milk. The honey-and-milk creation that was given to newlyweds is where we get our word “honeymoon.” Beekeeping and honey-gathering was so much a part of their civilization that there were entire systems of laws defining bee cultivation and when you could claim a colony for your own.

They used honey for medicine, and the wax for any number of things: writing tablets, medical ingredients, molds of their deities, and for lighting. Beekeeping was widespread enough for cities to be known for their good or bad honey or wax. Beekeeping was a big part of their culture until 476 C.E., the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The History of Beekeeping in Europe (476 C.E.)
The Holy Roman Empire was the main driver of beekeeping in the middle ages, until the fall of the Empire in 1453. The demand and use of candles in churches and monasteries drove the need for extensive beekeeping colonies to provide the beeswax for so many candles being consumed at once.

While people did use honey as sweetener and beeswax for other reasons like seals and molds, candle-making really drove the industry. Bee colonies, and the virtues bees were assumed to have, also fueled their religious use. Bees were models of industriousness, purity, order, and so forth. Monasteries, which usually were self-supporting, also had beekeeping farms.

After the Protestant Reformation, many monasteries and churches were closed down. Lighting candles for devotion or supplication was no longer a main focus, and multiple beekeeping farms closed as well. Instead, what kept beekeeping in Europe alive was the development of metheglin, or honey-based mead.

In the 1500s and 1600s, bees started to expand their territory around the world as they accompanied European ships from coast to coast. By this time, Europeans had discovered a way around Africa to South and East Asia, and had also discovered the American continents.

In the 1700s, the Age of Enlightenment and scientific discovery, bees were finally studied and classified properly. We learned more about how bees reproduced and worked, and dispersed many moral and religious assumptions about the colonies and hives. The existence of the queen bee was discovered, and our understanding of queens, drones, and worker bees grew.

The History of Beekeeping in America
The earliest known records of bee colonies being imported to the North American colonies are from 1622 to 1638, to certain Colonies on the East Coast. What is also sure is that by the early 1800s, there were bee hives from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Settlers carried hives with them, and from those hives swarms created new colonies.

Reverend L.L. Langstroth, known as the “Father of American Beekeeping,” was also a pioneer in scientific beekeeping methods. He first invented the beehive that is most familiar to us today, with movable and removable frames. In this way, honey and wax could be gathered without extensively disrupting the colony.

Soon after this, other beekeeping farms in America and other continents adopted Langstroth’s style of bee hives. This pioneering move changed the picture of beekeeping forever, and standardized it across the world. Extraction of honey, queen bee rearing, and separation of worker bees all grew quickly after this discovery.

Eventually, commercial beekeeping extended far past honey and beeswax. Now, professional beekeepers around the world take colonies and swarms from place to place to pollinate fruit-bearing and flowering plants.

How Is Beekeeping Today?
Last year, 2019, saw a nearly 40% drop in honey bee colonies in the United States. Similar drops in numbers were seen across the world. As colonies are taken from area to area to aid in pollination of fruit crops, the loss would have a negative effect on the crops that depend on this beekeeper-directed movement. The honey bee colonies have been steadily declining in number, with higher death rates each winter, for the past 15 years. With COVID-19 keeping beekeepers home in nearly every country, hives are unable to pollinate at their normal rate. Both colonies and crops are sure to feel the impact in 2020.
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Re: All Things Bees

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The Ancient Sacred Origin of Honey and Bees

By Gina O’Connor - 11 October, 2011

http://www.internationalspiritualexperi ... y-and-bees

Summer's Solstice! In honor of this day, I put together some pieces of information about the honeybee and the roots of its symbolism and reverence for it in ancient cultures all around the world. The Summer Solstice is closely tied to honey, fertility, and the bees.

In fact, the word "honeymoon" derives from the use of mead (fermented honey) by a couple after their marriage to promote fertility. It is a nice sacrament to use in various ceremonies to observe this day and the bees certainly deserve to be venerated and honored for all they represent and all they do for us and nature.

Mythological Depictions Of Bees, The Beehive And Honey
In consideration of some of the myths surrounding our symbols, in general, bees have been thought of as messengers of the spirits. "Telling the bees" was a way to relay messages to friends and relatives who have passed over. In some folklore, the sudden presence of a bee represents the imminent arrival of a stranger. Looking back to Eqypt, bees were considered tears of the sun-god RA. Here we see a relationship with the sun that we will see later. The bee hieroglyphic is a symbol of Lower Egypt.

Because of the sudden appearances of bees they became symbols of death and rebirth. Bees also represented the soul. Honey was often offered to deities.In Hindu myth and iconography, the bee surmounting a triangle is a symbol of Shiva. Sometimes we see a blue bee on the forehead of Krishna, as the avatar of Vishnu. Kama, the god of love, like Cupid has a bow and arrows, and the bow string is made up of bees. In the yogic doctrine, where each chakra emits a different sound in meditation, the lowest chakra (muldhahara) emits a hum likened in the writings to a bumblebee. Note that the first chakra represents our strongest bond to the material world and Eros or Cupid in Greek philosophy is the natural impelling force towards sensual objects.

Further in the ancient Greek world, for the Orphics the bee symbolized the soul because they migrated in swarms. The second temple built at Delphi was said to be built by bees. The god of love, Cupid, is often pictured with bees or being stung. In the myth it is written that Venus says to her son after he is stung: "Thou too art like a bee, for although a tiny child, yet how terrible are the wounds thou dost inflict!" Periclymenus, one of the Argonauts, was granted by Posidon the power of changing his shape into a lion, a snake, or a bee.
Throughout the Mediterranean the bee was also a symbol of Spring because it was associated with the blooming gorse (a broom) that turned the hillsides all over the region bright yellow as soon as the Sun's light increased. As soon as this happened the bee appeared. Here is another connection of the bee with the sun and with the idea of resurrection.

A fascinating connection regards the Rites of Eleusis. These mystery rites were widely regarded as the high point of Greek religion. They centered around the goddess Demeter who was the Great Mother deity. The myth regarded nature's seasonal death and resurrection and represented it in the story of Demeter, her daughter Persephone and her abduction by Hades. Persophone or Kore was sometimes called honey-like and the moon (among other reasons because the moon is also called a bull and Taurus is its exaltation). The rites were conducted by the Hierophant and Hiera, the Hierophantides (2 females) and the Panageis Priestesses or Milissae - meaning bees. The function of these priestesses is still not known.

There are coins from Ephesus from the 5th century B.C. that depict a queen bee as a symbol of the Great Mother. Ephesus was known throughout the ancient world for its temple to the Great Mother Goddess.(more on http://mill-valley.freemasonry.biz/worrel/beehive.htm), in France and in ancient Egypt (associated with Râ, the Sun God).Three hundred gold bees were discovered in the tomb of Childeric I (on the year 481), which showed that the hive was the model of an absolute menarche. Napoleon I used bees as a motif on all his carpets, as well as on his coronation robes. As the workers of the hive, bees are symbol of an industrious and prosperous community governed by the queen bee. They have therefore symbolized all that is. In the Greek religion, the bee was sometimes identified with Demeter, the goddess of the earth and crops, who represented the soul sent to hell. The bee also symbolizes the soul that flies away from the body in the Siberian, Central Asian, and South American Indian traditions. As organizers of the universe between earth and sky, bees symbolize all vital principles," (Pliny) and also settled also on the lips of Saint Ambrose, the patron-saint of beekeepers. According to Virgil, they have a grain of divine intelligence and the famous Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, was called "the bee of Delphi". In some texts from India, the bee represents the spirit becoming intoxicated with the pollen of knowledge. In Hebrew, the word for bee, Dbure, has its origins in the word Dbr, speech. They settled on the mouth of the child, Plato, "Bees also symbolize: it represents his mildness and mercy on one side and his justice on the other.

Shamanism, the world's oldest healing tradition, is found in all cultures on Earth. Shamans work with their allies--the animal spirits.Bees inhabited the sacred grove, the enchanted forest, the timeless realm between the living and the dead. The sweetness of honey had a mystical sense; it was a taste of the sweetness of wisdom, the wisdom of the numinous other world.

Bees were everywhere an essential part of the depiction of wild nature. The Priestesses of Artemis, the Goddess of the mountains and the forest and the moon, were called Melissonomoi, beekeepers. A fragment of early Greek poetry, Alcman 89, describes creatures of the wilderness: Birds of the Muses "Bees have an ancient reputation as the bringers of order, and their hives served as models for organizing temples in many Mediterranean cultures.

Priestesses at Cybele's temples in Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome were called Melissai or Melissae, the Greek and Latin words for bees. These priestesses were often prophets or oracles who entered an ecstatic trance enduced by preparations that included ingesting honey. (The Greek word for this state of transfigured consciousness is enthusiasmos -- 'within is a god" -- the root of our word enthusiasm.)Bees, familiars of the Goddess since Catal Huyuk, appear frequently in classical mythology. They are called the "Birds of the Muses" and are attracted to the heavenly fragrances of flowers, from which they make the divine nectar, honey. Honey is antibacterial, and its mildly laxative properties and sweet taste made it a primary ingredient in ancient medicines. It was widely believed to be a source of divine nourishment. In the myths of the ancient world, honey often nourished a divine child raised in secret by a goddess in the depth of caves. "(greatfully quoted from When the Drummers were Women by Layne Redmond)

The precise identity of the Bee Goddess remains a great mystery. Nevertheless, she is a very strong spirit for these times of great transition. Signs of her worship are evident in the Mediterranean cultures of around 3,000 years ago at the temples of Artemis. She is one of the oldest and most popular aspects of the Divine Feminine. Image Born on the Greek Island of Delos, Artemis was sister of Apollo and daughter to Zeus and Leto. When she was a young girl, her father, Zeus, asked her what was her dream? She answered that she wished to never have to marry a man and to always be free to roam in the wild forest. Artemis was known as a patron of young virgins, and a powerful protectress of the natural world of fertility. As with other early Goddesses, ceremonies to invoke Artemis were held in groves of trees, at places of special rock outcroppings, at sacred sites along rivers or at quiet springs. Ironically, Artemis's blessings were evenutally cultivated at exquisite temple sites constructed throughout the Mediterranean region.

There is an ancient Egyptian story that bees were born from a tear in the eye of the sun, touching upon their goldenness, the sense that honey is gold, materialized sunlight.Samson comes upon a lion, like Samson, the Hebrew word for "of the sun," a creature of the sun, a creature of gold. She tears the lion apart with Her bare hands. Later She finds the lion's carcass filled with bees. She reaches inside and takes some honey in Her hand and eats it. "Out of the eater came what is eaten," says Samson, "and out of the strong came what is sweet": the painful rending of strength, the hard, discloses within it what is soft, the sweetness.

Bee shows us we can accomplish what seems impossible by having dedication and working hard. It asks us to pursue our dreams with incredible focus and fertilize our aspirations. Bee teaches us to cooperate with others who have similar goals so we can learn how to help each other.Bee shamanism may well be the most ancient and enigmatic branch of shamanism. It exists throughout the world--wherever in fact the honeybee exists. Its medicinal tools--such as honey, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly--are now in common usage, and even the origins of Chinese acupuncture can be traced back to the ancient practice of applying bee stings to the body’s meridians.

Symbolism of the Bee
St. John Chrysostom in his twelfth homily: "The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others." Indeed, the bee works unceasingly for the common good of the hive, and obeys without question what sometimes appears to be an inequitable hierarchy. There are additional meanings of the bee that the Mystery traditions have left us. We cannot hope to exhaust the meanings of Her symbol, but we may at least make a start. Bees are often considered a symbol of the Goddess or Divine Feminine because they are ruled by queens. In particular, they are associated with the goddess Venus because part of their labor is the indirect fertilization of flowers, all of which come under the dominion of Venus. Without bees, many species of flowers would die out, and so the bee may justly be considered a handmaiden of that goddess.

There is a Greek tradition, too, of the Nine Muses, the divine patronesses or music and poetry, taking on the form of bees. Her comports well with the ruler-ship of Venus over the arts. Another occult tradition states that the mysterious figure Melchizedek, who is mentioned in the Bible in connection with giving communion to the patriarch Abraham, is an entity that brought three gifts to earth from the planet Venus: the bee, wheat, and the mineral asbestos. The tradition is an allegorical one. The meaning of the three gifts may be partially understood as symbolizing three grades of initiation. In the first grade, one serves (bee). In the second grade, the initiate focuses on understanding and practicing the development of the many out of the one (wheat). In the third grade, the initiate becomes a channel of the Divine Fire; She burns, but is not consumed (asbestos).

In the sacred tradition known as the Qabalah, the planet and goddess Venus are associated with the Sephirah Netzach. THer Sephirah is also called "Saykel Nesether", or the "Occult Intelligence." Two of the potencies of human consciousness that have their root in Venus or Netzach are creative imagination and desire. These are two sine qua non of occult development. Without knowledge of the right use of creative imagination and desire, the aspirant makes little progress.

The bee is also a symbol for wisdom, for it collects pollen from many flowers and turns it into the nourishing honey, which is the gold of bees. Just so, the occult aspirant collects experience from the varying circumstances of Her life and from it extracts spiritual gold. As the spiritual alchemists imply, the life of the occult aspirant is Her laboratory, and Her consciousness and Her body the subjects of Her spiritual experiments. Image Yet there is even more meaning for those occultists who study the Egyptian tradition -- a tradition from which we, ourselves, draw inspiration. A well known cosmological myth from the ancient Egyptian city of Heliopolis --Greek for City of the Sun, but known as Annu or Iunu in Egyptian, and which is now located in a suburb of modern Cairo -- is that the sun-god Re was self-generated, having spontaneously arisen from the primordial Waters of the Nun (Footnote 1). After Her self-generation, Re began to generate other gods. Another story provides additional dimension to our subject.

A lesser known tradition, and one that the priests of Heliopolis themselves are said to have taught as part of their allegorical mysteries, states that the goddess Neith was the first deity that emerged from the Waters of the Nun, making her the foremost of the Egyptian Gods. Having arisen from the Nun, she rested upon a primeval mound that had formed in the midst of the Waters. Raising her voice, she uttered the first sounds or words of power -- "hekau" in Egyptian -- and then created Light (Footnote 2). Next, she became Virgin Mother of the Sun by giving birth to Re, who appeared as a child on the horizon (Footnote 3). She granted the power of disseminating Light to Re through the vehicle of the Sun, then in the form of a bee flew off to the place where the city Sais -- called "Sau" in Egyptian, and which was situated in the middle of the Nile delta -- was to be in order to establish her cult and temple there. The Temple of Neith in Sau is traditionally known as the House of the Bee -- or "Hoot-Bit" in Egyptian.

There are a couple of other myths that support Her version of the Heliopolitan cosmology. First, there is a story from the corpus of myths surrounding the battles of Horus and Set. The Council of Gods convened to decide who should rule Egypt after the death of the god Osiris. Set had murdered Osiris and usurped the throne, but Horus was the rightful heir, though Her youth and inexperience were considered unfavorable factors in the minds of some gods.

After much discussion, the gods could come to no resolution, so they suggested that Thoth, the scribe of the Gods, write a letter to Neith, whom they considered the wisest of the Gods. Thoth willingly agreed, and began Her letter: "To Neith, the Eldest One, the Mother of the Gods, who shone in the primeval time." Another myth that may indicate Re's birth from Neith is the story of Isis and Re. Isis, desiring to become as powerful as Re, decided to trick him into revealing Her magic name to her. Knowledge of that name would give Isis great power. She fashioned a serpent out of the spittle of Re that she had found amongst some cedars. She set the serpent along the path where she knew Re was accustomed to walk. Re was bitten, and the poison coursed through Her body, causing agonizing pain. Re screamed and cried in rage, and the tears that flowed from Her eyes turned into bees. Perhaps a cry for help to Her mother? The text does not say. However, since Re has been effectually immobilized, is in pain greater than She can bear, and does not know how to make it cease, it is not unreasonable to assume that She might be calling on the Eldest, the Mother of the Gods, to come to Her aid. Thirdly, the Egyptians sometimes gave Neith the title "Opener of the Ways" because it was she that was the first conscious entity to begin the process of manifestation (Footnote 4).

It is said that the statue of Neith in the House of the Bee was veiled, and that inscribed at its base were the words, "I am all that has been, that is, or shall ever be; no mortal man hath ever me unveiled." Another phrase associated with Neith is "The fruit which I have brought forth is the Sun." Now these phrases are interesting because the first implies a temporal and substantive omnipresence of Neith, which comports well with an entity that was the first to emerge from the Nun. Moreover, the first phrase is almost exactly the esoteric meaning of the Qabalistic God-Name YHVH, or Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh. Their Qabalistic name is derived from the Hebrew verb "to be." Just so, the name Neith is derived from a similarly extended Egyptian verb "to be" (Footnote 5). The second phrase implies that she is the mother of the Sun. We may reasonably take tHer as further confirmation that Neith is, at least by some accounts, the mother of the sun-god Re (Footnote 6).

The symbol of the Veil is an important one throughout the Mysteries, whether they be Christian, Greek, Egyptian, Qabalistic, Rosicrucian, etc. and meditation on the Veil will fruitfully repay the occult student. In one sense, the veil of Neith shrouds what occultists term the "mind side of Nature." The initiate in the House of the Bee was told by the goddess, "Come look beneath my veil." It is both an invitation, and a dare. When the veil is lifted to one by the grace of the goddess, the initiate perceives the inner workings and patterns of Nature, and so perceiving, thereafter learns to consciously participate in them, such that She becomes a human administrator of the will of the Gods (Footnote 7). In fact, the initiate at Her point fully recognizes Her own inner divinity and the responsibilities that such recognition brings. She has become something more than human. And though She still be man, She has not violated Neith's statement "no mortal man hath ever me unveiled." One must take Nature as Her Master before one can take Her as Her Mistress. Her every ancient Egyptian initiate knew. We modern occultists also pay great heed to tHer principle.

Neith was primarily a goddess of wisdom, but also of weaving; it is said that her gift to the newly-deceased were the cloth wrappings in which they were buried (Footnote 8). Some of her oldest and most primitive symbols were hunting equipment -- crossed arrows or spears and two bows. Because of these associations, and her associations with childbirth, the Greeks identified Neith with both Athena (the goddess of wisdom, weaving, and skill in battle), and Artemis (goddess of the hunt, the moon, and childbirth). In particular, she was associated with Artemis Dictynna, an aspect of Artemis as patroness of fisherman, particularly in Crete. Additionally, the symbolism of the net is not too dissimilar from that of the veil (Footnote 9).

In time, though still in the predynastic period in Egyptian Hertory, the figure of the bee became a symbol of royalty in Egypt (Footnote 10). One of the titles of Pharoah in Her office as King of Lower Egypt and wearer of the Red Crown was "Ny-Bit" -- "She who belongs to the Bee" (Footnotes 12 and 13). It is very likely that tHer title was derived from the association of the Bee with the Mother of the Gods, Neith. After all, Pharaoh was seen as a descendant of the Gods, if not a god incarnate himself. But Her is not all. The Red Crown of Egypt is called "deshret", but in some Pyramid texts, it is termed "net" -- a word etymologically very similar to the Egyptian word for Neith. Indeed, Neith is often depicted in temple drawings wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt.

It is also of interest that the root word for bee in Egyptian was also used to describe persons of fine character or good quality. Those that are familiar with the curricula of the modern schools of initiation will know that the development of fine character and good qualities is one of the primary aims of the beginning student's work in the Lesser Mysteries.

To summarize, we have associated the bee with service, diligence, the right use of creative imagination and desire, and the collection of wisdom from the experiences of life. From the association with the Egyptian goddess Neith, we have linked the bee to the discernment, and consequent use and administration, of the veiled laws and patterns of Nature, as well as the process of coming to know our own inner divinity as a spiritual fact. Finally, we have seen the bee as a symbol of spiritual royalty and the development of fine character.http://goddessschool.com/magickalbee.html

ROYAL JELLY
Royal Jelly is the substance that turns an ordinary bee into the Queen Bee. It is made of pollen which is chewed up and mixed with a chemical secreted from a gland in the nursing bee's heads. This "milk" or "pollen mush" is fed to all the larvae for the first two days of their lives. The larvae chosen to become a queen continue to eat only royal jelly. The queen grows one and a half times larger than the ordinary bee, and is capable of laying up to two thousand eggs a day. The Queen Bee lives forty times longer than the bees on a regular diet. There is no difference between a queen bee and a worker bee in the larval stage. The only factor that is different between them is that a developing queen bee continues to eat only royal jelly. Scientists decided to try feeding the queen bee's diet to other animals with surprising results. The life spa of pigs and roosters showed as much as a thirty- percent increases. Fruit flies fed royal jelly increased in size and in rate of production. Chickens given royal jelly laid twice as many eggs, and older chickens began to lay again.

In France, there have been reports of women fed royal jelly during menopause, showing complete remission of their symptoms. Some were even able to become mothers again. France also claimed that their studies showed royal jelly to have rejuvenating and sexually stimulating effects on both men and women. Canada has approved royal jelly as a natural dietary supplement for its athletes. Royal jelly is not a drug, but a nutritious, quickly assimilated food.
In Germany, Drs. Chochi, Prosperi, Quadri and Malossi (in separate studies) used royal jelly as an aid to badly undernourished and premature babies. The infants fed royal jelly increased in weight and health. Another doctor, Telatui, reported that neuro-psychic patients given royal jelly regained normal weight, a more stable nervous system, and a greater degree of stamina for physical and mental work.

Chemical analysis of royal jelly found it rich in protein and the B vitamins (especially panothenic acid). However, analysis of royal jelly fails to break it down into all its different components. It cannot be synthesized. Royal jelly has proven to be a potent bactericide. It also acts as a catalyst, stimulating intercellular metabolic activities without significantly modifying normal physiological activity. Thus, it hastens cell recovery with no side effects. Royal jelly has been known to speed up healing of wounds and to reduce the amount of scarring.The beneficial effects of royal jelly seem not to depend entirely upon its vitamin content, but upon some type of enzymatic or catalytic action of an as yet unknown factor; or perhaps, the known factors working in combination with a co-enzyme through a process that has not yet been defined.

Since the action of royal jelly seems to be systemic rather that one which affects a specific biological function, it has been recommended for a great variety of purposes: to retard the aging process, for menopause, correction of under-nutrition, for arthritis, vascular diseases, peptic ulcers, liver ailments, nervous instability, skin problems, improvement of sexual functions, general health and well being.http://www.backyardbeekeepers.com/facts.html

Why bees?
All elements of an ecosystem are important to the functioning of that ecosystem. Remove one element and the system will need to make adjustments. The effect of that adjustment may often not be known until after it has happened. It may be positive or negative, from a human standpoint, but we cannot look at nature from a human standpoint only. Why? Well, ecosystems are complex, possibly too complex for us to be able to understand all the connections and actions and interactions that takes place within them. If we do not know what will happen if something changes, it makes no sense to rush in and make those changes.

Now, with bees and honey bees, in particular we know that over one-third of our food supply relies upon them for pollination services and we know that pollination is essential for the reproduction of the plants the bees service.The honey bee is a major pollinator of many of our food crops, almonds, apples, avocados, blueberries, cantaloupes, cherries, cranberries, cucumbers, sunflowers, watermelon and many other crops all rely on honey bees for pollination.

So if honey bees disappear and we do not find replacements that can do the work they do then foods that we take for granted will decrease in supply and increase in price.The pollination service provided by insect pollinators, bees mainly, was €153 billion (euros) in 2005 for the main crops that feed the world. This figure amounted to 9.5% of the total value of the world agricultural food production.The main reason that the honey bees is important for our world is as simple as this; if the honey bee does not pollinate the crops, the crops do not grow and produce the food that gets harvested and brought to the store where we buy it and bring it home to feed ourselves and our families.In other words there is a direct connection between the bees pollinating the crops and our ability to provide food for our families. The honey bees do provide a second service; they make honey! http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-saving-the- ... -our-world_

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Albert Einstein

Long Live the Queen and Her Hive! Bee Blessed!
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Re: All Things Bees

Post by Spiritwind »

8 Interesting Facts About the Queen Bee

April 20, 2021

The queen bee is the only one in her caste, and she is the most important bee in the entire colony.  Her job is to lay all of the eggs in the hive, and she lays a lot of them. 

While her name implies that she’s the ruler of the colony, that isn’t quite true. They have more of a democratic system, where worker bees actually vote on certain things, such as the swarm’s next nesting location.  

1. The queen bee lays up to 2,000 eggs per day.

That amounts to 1 egg every 43 seconds.  She is responsible for laying all of the eggs in the colony.  Each egg is 1 – 1.5mm long, about half the size of a grain of rice. 

2. Any fertilized egg can become the queen.

The queen can lay either an unfertilized or fertilized egg. Unfertilized eggs become drones, or male bees.  Fertilized eggs become workers or a queen.  
Queen bee larvae are exclusively fed royal jelly, while worker larvae consume a diet of honey and pollen.  So, it is diet that determines whether a fertilized egg will become a queen.  

3. The queen mates once in her life.

The queen bee spends 1-2 days mating with as many drones as possible.  The sperm is collected and stored in a special organ which she uses to lay eggs for the rest of her life.  Once the queen runs out of genetic material, she will be replaced by the colony.  

4. New queens must kill their competitors.

When a colony needs a new queen, worker bees will make more than one.  This gives them a better chance of having a strong queen.  However, only one queen can stay in a hive. 

When a new queen hatches, she uses her stinger to kill the unhatched queens.  If 2 new Queens hatch at the same time, they fight to the death, with the winner becoming queen.  

5. The queen is the largest bee in the colony.

Her abdomen sticks out much further than the tips of her wings. She also has a hairless, shiny, black back and long, light colored legs.  This is in comparison to worker bees, who have hairy backs and shorter, dark legs.  Some beekeepers mark their queens with a dab of colored paint to make them easier to find.  

6. A colony cannot survive without a queen.

The queen bee is the only bee in the entire colony that is needed for the colony’s survival.  The queen’s 2 main purposes are to lay eggs and to produce chemical scents, called pheromones, to send signals to the rest of the colony.  

Workers spread the pheromones throughout the hive using their antennae. When workers notice there is no pheromone, they know they are queenless.  They will then construct queen cells to create a new queen.  

7. The queen bee has a reusable stinger.

Unilke worker bees who typically die after stinging once, the queen bee can sting multiple times.  This is because she has a smooth stinger.  Worker bees have barbed stingers, so when they sting, they cannot pull their stinger out.  This causes massive abdominal rupture to the bee. 

The queen’s stinger has another important use – laying eggs.  Her stinger is a modified ovipostor, which is used to lay and position eggs.  

8. The queen has attendants.

The queen would die if she did not receive constant care from her attendants.  These bees groom her, feed her, and carry away her waste. They even have to digest her food for her. She lacks the glands that worker bees use to digest their food, so they pre digest the queen’s food before feeding it to her. 

Summary
These facts about the queen bee has made one thing clear, the queen bee is extremely fascinating. From the way she is born, to the way she expands her colony, the queen is the most important bee in the colony.
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Re: All Things Bees

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Much has transpired since we first picked up our package of bees on April 25. We just added another deep (brood box) a few days ago, and they have been busy. A little more work than I thought, having to change out the sugar water every 4-5 days so it doesn’t get moldy on the lids. But fascinating in every way. I personally don’t care if we get any honey at all. And especially this first year, we probably won’t. Getting them through the summer isn’t nearly as big of a deal as to whether they can make it through the first winter. I’m trying to figure out the best way to use rhubarb (tea or ....?), which is supposed to be a way to keep the varroa mite from gaining too much traction. There are a number of other methods too. Trying to stay holistic and natural. My husband went out with me for the first time too! Here is some more interesting information.

Image

Beehives Are Held Together by Their Mutual Gut Microbes
By Shahla Farzan on April 20, 2021

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podc ... -microbes/

New research shows that members of a bee colony all have the same gut microbiome, which controls their smell—and thus their ability to separate family from foe...

This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Shahla Farzan.
Every honeybee colony has its own unique scent like a fingerprint. And bees use that scent to recognize their nest mates—basically saying, “You smell like me, so I’m going to let you into the colony.”

But here’s the mystery: If you transfer a baby bee into a new hive, not only does the colony accept it, but that bee will eventually smell like its adopted nest mates—even though they’re not genetically related.

“This kind of got us thinking, ‘Perhaps it’s not actually the genetics of the bee; it’s actually the genetics of the microbes that live within the bee.’”

Cassondra Vernier is a postdoctoral researcher [now] at the University of Illinois. She knew gut microbes can affect the scent and communication of other animals, like hyenas.

So she and her co-authors designed a series of experiments to test whether microbes also change the scent compounds coating the outside of honeybees, known as cuticular hydrocarbons. [Cassondra L. Vernier et al., The gut microbiome defines social group membership in honey bee colonies]

In one experiment, they fed different gut microbes to newly hatched sister bees. The bees developed distinct microbiomes—and they also produced different cuticular hydrocarbon scents. On the other hand ...

“If they were treated with different inoculums, they recognized each other as non-nest mates. And they attacked each other, usually in the form of biting each other.”

In other words, bees from the same colony did not recognize each other when they had different gut microbes.

Washington University [in St. Louis] biology professor and co-author Yehuda Ben-Shahar says the microbes are changing the bees physiologically and controlling their complicated social behaviors. But he adds this relationship is mutually beneficial for the bacteria and the bees.

“The bees have to have some of these bacteria, so you have a system where this relationship serves the biology of both the bacteria and the host. And it gets to a point where it’s obligatory, so one cannot exist without the other.”

Being able to distinguish nest mates from invaders is absolutely critical, Ben-Shahar says.

Without that ability, bees would be vulnerable to nest parasites—and to other bees looking to steal their most precious commodity: honey. And so the entrance fee must be paid—not in dollars but in scents.

For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Shahla Farzan.
—Shahla Farzan
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Re: All Things Bees

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Here is a very short (2 minutes) video that I am going to show to my grandsons next time they are over. Funny that after all the videos I have watched, this one by a kid is the best.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/o2fCID_YYZc[/youtube]
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Re: All Things Bees

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I know I haven’t kept up on this thread, and now it’s almost the end of the season. I have several books, and there are many videos out there, but in the end I’ve had to make my best guess and go with it. Many, like a couple groups I’ve joined on FB, won’t even really answer your questions, and only ask you more questions, which isn’t helpful. Or, they want to promote their business, and “instruct” you, according to their own wisdom and experience (and still not answer your questions).

A couple months ago, I added a super (smaller box with frames for the bees to store honey in) on top, but, although the bees had started to build some comb on the frames, they never did get to store any honey in it. Which is fine, because first year bees often don’t have enough time. So I took the top box back off. I knew I needed to do some kind of mite treatment, but the person who was going to come over and help me with that got too busy to come over, which put me a couple weeks late at being able to do two 14 day treatments with apiguard (turns out it’s super easy to apply and seems to work well). I had to order it, and was able to apply the first one. I’ll be taking what’s left out probably this Saturday, one of the last days predicted for over 55 degrees for awhile, and putting in what’s called fondant. It’s a thin hard square sugar block that you lay on top of the frames. This will help feed them through the cold winter months, in case they use up their honey stores. They huddle together in a group, and can sometimes starve because frames with honey are too far away for them to reach.

I also quit giving them sugar water, because it’s getting too cold at night for it to warm up enough for them during the day, and then put an empty super back on, without the frames. I’m going to put wood shavings in there, to help absorb moisture that the bees generate when trying to stay alive and not freeze to death. I’m going to put a couple wood wedges under the back corners of the hive, to tilt it slightly forward, as this will also help keep any moisture from accumulating, which can fall back on to the bees and freeze them. The last thing is to turn the removable piece of wood at the bottom to the smaller opening for the entrance. The top inner cover has a small entry as well, which is good in case the bottom entrance gets clogged.

I still see them coming in with stuff on their legs, so they are busy right up until they can’t leave the hive anymore, at which point we will also wrap a strap around the hive, and ratchet it down. This will keep any huge winds from blowing the top off (though it’s pretty heavy anyway) as well as hopefully keeping any bears from tearing the hive apart. There’s some folks probably only a couple miles away, if that, that have cameras up near a pond on their property, and have three bears who come regularly, and I’ve heard that they can smell honey from 6 miles away. Presumably they would have to be extra desperate to go for them with the two dogs here, but better safe than sorry. So very glad I built the shelter for them, and it turns out I picked a good spot that gets great afternoon sun, as well as helping to keep the wind off. I’ll have to watch for snow buildup around the front though.

In any case, it’s going to be a hard winter here for all of us, goats, bees, and humans alike. The dogs are the only ones who don’t seem to mind the cold. I’ve learned a ton, and will do everything within my power to give them the best chance of survival, but after that it’s up to them and nature, as I mentioned elsewhere. I’m happy that they really didn’t experience what called a dearth, where they just can’t find anything, as there are a variety of plants, both indigenous, as well as stuff we planted here, that they stayed very busy throughout the season, and never behaved really snarky towards me. I gained a great deal more confidence in working with them as well. Nature it the BEST teacher of all!
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