The Benefits of honey and beekeeping
Benefits of honey and beekeeping
Let’s start with the obvious point, bees are industrious. They put in an incredible shift, flying 55,000 miles and visiting 2 million flowers to make 1lb of honey. A large hive of 60,000 honey bees can “fly to the moon” in a day.
It’s their hard work that make them the king of pollinators, critical to both food production and biodiversity.In the wild they live in hollow trees in woodlands and beekeepers have learned over generations to harness their weird and wonderful ways with varyingly sophisticated man-made hives.
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More than half of our food depends on the pollination of bees. They fly further, visit more flowers and create more little connections than wasps, moths, butterflies, flies or beetles. The 7 species of honey bee alone are responsible for an astonishing 38% of all pollination*.
It is this range of contact that makes bees so important for biodiversity. Honey bees are important part of pollinating and sustaining a huge range of flora.
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Once back in their hives the worker bees graft diligently to look after their queen and her larvae and in so doing create a range of materials that we eat, drink, put on wounds, put in our hair, on our furniture and use to light our rooms.
Honey bees create (and Britain’s 26,000 beekeepers curate) an amazing range of materials. You can see their honey for sale at the farm-gate or roadside all over the countryside. It provides a rewarding hobby and useful source of additional income in remote locations.
Sustainable beekeeping** gives us:
Honey (made by the bees as a store of energy); it is used by us as a food, in drinks, as a natural remedy and brewed to mead
Beeswax is made by bees to build their hives; used by humans in balms, cosmetics, pomades, as well as artists materials, furniture polishes and candles
Propolis, which bees gather from tree buds to build a curtain around their nest. It is a natural antibiotic and protects the bee family from infections; we use it as a natural remedy for diabetes, mouth ulcers and inflammation as well as in the manufacture of musical instruments
Some of our favourite brands operating out of the bee’s world are:
Tropical Forest who make the wonderful Wainwright’s honey
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Bees For Development are a charity with global reach based in Monmouth. Through training, helping beekeepers find markets and adding value to products they bring sustainable beekeeping to those in hardship.
The benefits of honey and beekeeping start with the fact that a successful hive can be established skilfully and successfully with very little money. They can be made from all sorts of materials, such as bark or grass, hollowed logs or items usually considered trash. The bees come free, and they do not need to be fed or watered. Beekeeping can’t be expected to solve poverty but it can help individuals provide for their families, keep children in school, and expand horizons.
Circumstances can be dire. In the Amhara region of Ethiopia, resources are scarce, and jobs hard to find. Most young people here own no land and face a stark future. There is no social security; men and women take casual labour, toil land for crops and burn trees for charcoal. Rural landless households face food shortages for about four consecutive months in every year.
It was in those conditions that Bees For Development found Alemnesh Niguru in 2017. She had been taken from primary school and married to an older man. She ran away from her husband back to her family. She had no education, could not be married again and was an extra mouth for her parents to feed. She was a burden.
Beekeeping does require knowledge and skills. Investing in learning is what Bees for Development is all about. All over the world, people with beekeeping skills and knowledge can be found. These individuals often share their knowledge and experience in how to use local resources to best effect.
Alemnesh’s life changed when she was selected for a Bees for Development course. With some intensive training and inexpensive equipment, she became economically active and self-sufficient. By selling her honey, she has money for the first time and can make decisions for herself about her future.
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Wainwrights Honey from Aberystwyth and Bees For Development collaborate in Zambia where beekeepers actively protect their forests. Without their interest and protection, the ancient forest would be lost and the land farmed. The trade in honey is protecting the deepest forest where the best nectar is found.
As is so often the case, doing things with care creates special food. Wainwright’s Organic Zambian Forest honey is of a superb, untarnished quality. Its deep, complex flavour reflects the diversity of the forest and it is harvested hundreds of miles away from any agro-chemicals. It is as tasty, as organic and as ethical as a food product can be. We are proud to use it in our products.
For every bottle of Organic Apple Cider Vinegar with Honey that we sell, we know that Wainwrights are paying a fair price to the local farmer, and we also donate 25p to Bees for Development. They use this to fight chronic poverty, empower those with whom they work, and contribute to biodiversity maintenance. If you would like to donate directly, go to www.beesfordevelopment.org
Final Thoughts
The number of bees and beekeepers in the UK has been falling over recent years.
If you can afford to do so, buying organic local produce; this can contribute to a reduction in agro-chemicals that are associated with bee decline;
Stop to buy honey from the farm-gate or roadside vendor; and
**Please avoid royal jelly and bee venom products, which are not made in a bee-friendly way.
Beekeeping is zen. It was used by the US military to rehabilitate soldiers after the first world war and there are similar programmes running today.
*Too much of a good thing... we cannot hope to improve biodiversity with just 7 species of honey bee. Rewilding projects, supporting wild bees and all pollinating insects, are crucial. This article is helpful to explain how important other pollinators are: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711867/