Did you know that May 20th is World Bee Day? If you didn’t, that’s okay, because this Sunday will mark the first celebration of the occasion! That’s right — on December 20th, 2017, the United Nations adopted a resolution declaring May 20th the official day to celebrate honey bees and all of the important work they do for the world.
According to beeculture.com, the brainchild of this holiday was the president of the Slovenian Beekeeper’s Association, Bostjan Noc, and his idea had the support of every single UN member nation, as well as many world leaders, including Pope Francis! So what is it about bees that led all of these world leaders to come together?
Why Bees Matter
Let’s start with the obvious one... honey! Bees collect nectar from flowers, break it down into sugar, and store it in honeycombs within their hives. The combination of the comb’s shape and the constant flapping of the bees’ wings causes the water in the sugar to evaporate, which leaves behind raw honey. Beekeepers then collect the honeycomb frames, remove the caps, and extract the honey by spinning the frames in a centrifuge. (Source: How Honey is Made)
On average, a single beehive has 50,000 bees. Nearly all of those are “worker bees,” tasked with collecting nectar and creating honey for the rest of the hive. A typical hive produces 60 to 100 pounds of honey per year, and bees must collectively travel 55,000 miles for every pound of honey they produce! That’s almost 12 trips to the moon and back just for one year’s supply. At Kelly’s Four Plus, we use enough honey to support the production of roughly 140 hives’ worth of honey every year!
So why do we use honey in our granola? Apart from tasting delicious, honey is a natural sweetener, high in glucose and fructose, which means it won’t raise your blood sugar levels as quickly as refined sugar. Honey also has antibacterial properties, can soothe sore throats, and when applied topically, has been known to heal wounds. Humans have been collecting honey since at least 8000 BC! (Source: CNN Honey Health)
These sweet results have another benefit: in the process of collecting nectar, worker bees also pollinate flowers and plants, allowing those plants to reproduce and thrive. Pollinated crops include 400 different agricultural species and account for roughly one-third of all food consumed globally. Without bees, foods such as broccoli, asparagus, cantaloupes, cucumbers, pumpkins, blueberries, watermelons, almonds, apples, cranberries, and cherries would disappear! (Source: Why Bees Are Important)
Bees and the Brain
Scientists are now using bees to further understand the human brain. Dr. Thomas Seeley, a neurobiologist at Cornell University, published a paper in 2012 outlining a “potential deep parallel between how brains and bee swarms come to a decision.” The paper states that human brains, like swarms of bees, operate by analyzing multiple ideas simultaneously and then quickly coming to a consensus. This relationship could help us better understand our own brains, since it is much easier to study bee swarms than the human brain. (Source: Scientific American)
Final Thought
So, the next time you are craving something sweet, think with your hive mind and grab some honey!
If you would like to know more about how to help support the global bee population, please visit World Bee Day.
