Bee Healthy

Bee Fellas! What’s up?

We are just about to begin September and I want to introduce this month with an entry that describes a worldwide known bee’s product:

HONEY!! :]

Yes, I know this sweet and marvelous thing makes our toasts and hot cakes taste like heaven, but the usages and properties of bee honey go much deeper than that. I can almost hear that fitness querulous public claiming that this wonder is nothing but sugar and calories that feed our love handles. Take a look to what I have to say and then you can say anything.

Let’s go back many years … Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Chinese people are using honey as a bacteria killer, a disinfectant, a remedy for colds and poisoning, a direct energy boost for athletes, a … popular drug and as treatment for burns and surgeries recoveries? Will bees stop surprising us sometime?

If you want to know why this sweet sensation is so useful, you need to know how it is made! Our lil’ workaholics keep recollecting pollen and nectar from flowers and after a series of digestive and chemical procedures, a bumblebee saves a honey charge on a honeycomb cell. During this process, a cocktail of enzymes and oils are mixed up, and precisely those provide the honey with such healing powers. If that was not surprising enough, let me tell you another fact about honey: it never spoils! While managing the nectar, bees extract most of the contained water … and you know, bacteria and viruses can’t spread and therefore the wonder remains untouched (A brand new and natural preservative!!).

So what you think? We have just added chemist, doctor and food engineer to our list of the marvelous profession of bees. That gives me an idea! I will post that list right on the side bar, and I’ll update it as we discover more and more roles that bees perform.

I personally remember my child days when my throat sored and my voice disappeared. It was then that my mom used to give me honey with lemon to fix it up! Have any of you used honey as a natural remedy? Comment!

Have a nice week! And try some honey… that’s you fitness obsessed guy or girl!

PS. Susana de Leon is the official winner of the Bee Challenge!! She will be receiving the price during the following weeks. For you to know, I will be giving another price, so you still have the chance! By the way, if you want to read something about honey healing properties, follow this link (I found MOST of the data I presented there! MLA is a mere formality):

"HEALTH : Honeys Claims to Fame: Too Good to be True?" The Statesman: 1. ProQuest Research Library. Jan 19 2002. Web. 31 Aug. 2011 <http://search.proquest.com/docview/284105825?accountid=11643>.

Multipurpose bees?

Good night fellas! Have you already become bee lovers?

This week I want to talk about one of the most characteristic aspects of bees … their hexagonal honeycomb. Almost everyone in the world has saw, at least on a picture or a cartoon, that mysterious and captivating hexagonal pattern. But why it would be that our lil’ workaholics are always building their homes with that particular architecture?

Each hexagonal cell is multipurpose: it goes from being a larvae nursery to the bee’s workshop or a honey and pollenn cupboard. And as our friends wanted to be deadly efficient, they decided to use …hexagons? Apparently this is nothing but a mathematical issue. Honeycomb’s cells extend all around and are placed one next to each other. As no empty spaces should be left, bees had to look for a cell shape that could “fit in”. By the matter of 360 degrees and that inner angles should be a divisor of this amount; the only polygons that are useful were equilateral triangles, squares and hexagons (360 is a multiple of 30, 90 and 120 … do the math!). Now, for economizing resources, bees had to use the polygon with the biggest area to fill and the lower relative perimeter to build with wax … that is hexagons!

Ooh la la! Bees turned out to be workers, administrators, mathematicians, architects, and not to mention modernist interior designers!

What other role you think bees might take? C’mon! I want to hear your opinion.

PS. What about my last week challenge?! Nobody got it :(

Welcome to the Hive!

Hello there fellas! We’re just starting this blog about everything related to bee keeping (a.k.a. apiculture) and I’m sure we’ll have nothing but fun while learning about those little workaholics that kindly give us some honey for our toasts. As we warm up our wings for the new adventure let’s see what we know already:

Honey, they sting … black and yellow(8) … did I heard hexagons over there?

Those are great answers, but what about:

Beewax Propolis Veil Royal jam Bee Dancing

Apiarist Bee smoker Colonies Queen

Don’t be shy and share your opinion about bees. Even if you are allergic, a bug hater or were stung when child, take this opportunity to get involved with these amazing creatures.

Yes, I know by now you should be thinking “ugh! Another bug lover” but you might get surprised of how important they are for our life, and c’mon, can you tell me you don’t like honey?

Please comment and subscribe, and welcome to the Hive! :]

P.S. You should have noticed my nice and lovely bee picture … I challenge you to tell me to which cartoon series does it belongs to? Get it right and I guarantee a price, but you should keep in touch to see what it is.