Honeybees are fascinating creatures. Many years ago, I chose beekeeping as an FFA project in high school. Yes, through high school and part of college, I was a beekeeper!

Worldwide, honeybee survival is a serious issue (one I dealt with too). There are many factors involved, yet, honeybees are vital; they pollinate most of our crops!

Believe it or not, after ordering them, my honeybees arrived in the mail! They were packed in a small, wooden container covered with mesh screen. There was enough sugar water for the trip, and they clustered inside around the queen.

Every year, at 6 am, on the second Tuesday in April, I would get a phone call from someone at the post office. “Come and get your bees!!” One of the post office workers was allergic to bees and obviously wanted to avoid getting stung.

My dad or I would go pick up the containers, each filled with nearly 12,000 honeybees. I usually had three hives, but at one point, I had five. I didn’t get stung often, but once I got stung nine times—even through my bee suit! I must’ve been tinkering too long!

With my smoker and hive tool, I removed beeswax-covered frames from the hives. Then, I extracted the honey by hand in a ‘spinner’ (using centrifugal force). I sold the resulting jars of honey around my hometown. I also sold chunk honey and comb honey, too, both of which come with some of the beeswax.

The first time I tried my wildflower honey, I thought it was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted. I did a side-by-side comparison with the store-bought honey from the kitchen cupboard. It was awful—like cough syrup!

Honeybee Facts

A typical honeybee colony has around 60,000-80,000 workers during its active season (summer). Worker honeybees take on many specialized roles during their brief six-week lifespan. Some ‘jobs’ only last for a couple days.

These include cleaning the hive, feeding larvae to form new honeybees, and tending to the queen. Older honeybee tasks include hive ventilation, defending the hive from intruders, and foraging for nectar and pollen. Cue the famous ‘waggle dance’ (see cool video here)!

Honeybees live longer in the cold months, so they can maintain the hive until spring. Still, the temperature in the hive remains around 93 degrees at all times. In winter, honeybees form a cluster inside the hive to stay warm and conserve energy.

Honeybees never sleep!

A colony of honeybees consumes about 60 pounds of honey during winter, but they make much more (up to 400 pounds of honey!). Beekeepers harvest the excess.

A single honeybee can travel several miles from the hive to collect nectar, which eventually becomes honey. They can fly at speeds of 15 mph (pretty slow for an insect) and their wings beat about 200 beats per second!

A honeybee can visit ten flowers a minute, up to two hundred flowers on an average foraging journey. Yet, a single honeybee will only produce 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. Thus, it takes 768 honeybees visiting approximately two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

It would take about 1 ounce of honey to fuel a honeybee’s flight around the world.

Honey never spoils. The color of the honey varies depends on the plants where the nectar was collected. Honey contains vitamins, antibacterial enzymes, and is about 20% water.

Sources: http://www2.phy.ilstu.edu/~wenning/HIBA/bkcourse/amazing.pdf

http://www.honey.com/  http://northdakotahoney.com/honeyvalue.htm

A hive in action is amazing to watch—tens of thousands of honeybees working toward a common goal. Like the inner workings of a beehive, Life is better when we work together.

Seasons change, and our roles do too. We may not always fathom our contribution in God’s larger plan. But don’t let that stop you. Take heart. Trust God and keep serving others. “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” (Romans 12:12).

Like little honeybees, we have a lot of work to do each day. As we move from one task or person to the next, let’s encourage one another. Sometimes Life stings! But, gracious words are like honey and bring messages of hope, sweet to the soul (Proverbs 16:24).

How refreshing!

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God, thanks for honeybees and honey! Thanks for the sweet grace and hope You bring. Help us remain patient and steadfast in difficult seasons. Give us joy as we trust in You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen

Questions: If you eat honey, what is your favorite way to eat it? Have you ever been stung by a honeybee? How can you encourage someone today?