3.4 Bee Treats/ Products

    ◦    Flower nectar is 50 - 80% water mixed with sucrose, fructose and glucose.  Bees gather nectar from flowers and begin to dehydrate in their honey pouch on the flight back to the hive.   Then they regurgitate to another bee (more enzymatic activity) who then fills the honeycomb.  Dehydration  continues in the comb until nectar has become non fermentable honey (<20% water).
    ◦    Honey is shelf stable because of low water content and some antimicrobial properties.  It is the right consistency to last in King Tut's tomb for over 3000 years.  Don't harvest honey when it drips out of the hive (not dehydrated sufficiently).
    ◦    Honey is a good medicine: hygroscopic and acidic (apply externally on cuts and it will prevent bacterial growth), soothes burns, bronchial soother when taken at night for coughs and upper respiratory conditions.
    ◦    Depending on nectar sources, good raw honey contains many minerals, antioxidants and vitamins: Vitamin B6, C, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, zinc.  
    ◦    Honey is predominantly a carbohydrate 38 % fructose, 31% glucose, some other sugars and some amino acids.
    ◦    A single honeybee will produce approximately 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
    ◦    It would take one ounce of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world.
    ◦    Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day. One single bee usually visits between 50-100 flowers on a trip and can visit thousands in a day.
    ◦    To make one cup of honey, the bees in the colony must visit 2 million flowers, fly over 55,000 miles and will be the lifetime work of approximately 700 bees.
    ◦    150 million pounds of honey is produced in the U.S with sales tallying about 150 million dollars.

    •    Approximately a quarter of our food is bee pollinated including most fruits, vegetables, nuts.
    •    Bee pollination is a 15 billion dollar industry.
    •    For more information, see supplemental article -- "The Pleasures & Plights of Pollination."

    •    Both Royal Jelly (for the queen) and 'worker jelly' or brood food is produced by nurse bees in their hypopharangeal glands.  It is higher in protein,vitellogenin and easier to assimilate than bee bread.
    •    Queens are fed exclusively royal jelly there entire lives through the hypopharyngeal glands of worker bees.  
    •    Baby bees are fed a version of royal jelly  or 'worker jelly' with slightly less protein and sugar than the queen receives while larvae and for the first three days after they hatch in order to develop their bodies  with it's high  protein and minerals content.
    •    The last brood hatched before winter can live 6 months rather than 3 weeks like most summer bees is a combination of not working themselves to death foraging and the "fountain of youth" vitellogenin in the jelly.  Typically, a baby bees first task after cleaning out it's cell is to nurse younger baby bees and functionally pass on protein and vitellogenin.  Since the last brood of the season has no bees to nurse, they get this extra load of royal jelly to sustain their much longer inactive life through the winter.  
    •    Royalactin promotes the ovaries to develop.  Queen bees have/are the only fully developed sexual organs.  Some workers (though not all) are able to lay drones as only the fertilized eggs of the queen can become workers.  Most workers can't lay at all having not ingested enough royalactin.  
    •    Contains many B Vitamins, enzymes, minerals, 12% protein, and 5% (relatively high) fatty acids.  
    •    Commmercial royal jelly production entails killing farmed queens on the eighth day of their life cycle.