Honey is one of only 2 products that the body does not digest, (the other is Brandy) it goes straight into the bloodstream, Grey Hound racing trainers are feeding it to their dogs before a race and they are winning!!!!!!!!!!!!! Below is some info on Honey an amazing natural product. We have obtained a beehive and swarm and will be testing out the benefits………….. overview and details below
—-HONEY is a sweet, viscous liquid made up of natural sugars and trace elements, produced by bees from the nectar they collect from flowers within 2-3 miles of their hive. They ripen the nectar into honey by reducing the water content of the nectar from around 80 percent to 16 per cent. The
flavour of the honey is determined by the type of flowers being ‘worked’ by the bees . They also collect pollen from the flowers and in the process, pollinate the flowers . The pollen blows in the wind and is the cause of ‘hayfever’ allergies. Many people believe that taking local honey on a regular basis helps immunise them from these attacks. Mankind has been aware of the value of honey for thousands of years. In ancient times honey was the only known sweetener and is mentioned regularly in the Bible, some say about 1400 times..
Sugar has only been available from 18th century.
Honey is the only foodstuff not to spoil. Even if it granulates, heating it to a maximum of 62deg C. restores it to liquid form without loss of quality. It is easily absorbed and requires little digestion (brandy being the only other product with similar properties.) Honey also has antiseptic qualities and in the past has been used in treating burns, lacerations and ulcers,- being particularly good on leg ulcers, even when conventional medicine has failed. It was used in embalming the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt, and look at how they ‘kept’.
Honey is available in liquid form or ‘on the comb’ i.e. in wax as it came out of the hive. Some useless information.
It takes 16,000 bee-journeys to produce one pound of honey.
A number of everyday sayings have bee orientation e.g. the bee’s knees(referring to a bee loaded with pollen) – Queen bee (boss)
Bee-line ( straight line from point A – B) Busy bee – worker bees are constantly busy and work themselves to death in about 6 weeks
And numerous others
A good hive of bees will contain between 30,000 and 300,000 bees.
The core of the hive is kept at a steady 93 deg F. There is only one queen who is basically an egg-laying machine. She can’t even feed herself but lays up to 2,500 eggs per DAY. The drone is the male. He dies in the act of mating with the virgin queen, which is done on the wing and if he doesn’t die this way he is killed off in August at the end of the honey flow. Some outlook in life?
Bee stings are an old remedy for arthritis/rheumatism pains ( and it works)(Apitherapy). The bee dies in the act of stinging, having a barbed sting.(but the Queen can sting as often as she likes but only uses it against other queens.)
Swarming is the bees way of ‘going forth and multiplying’. A good bee-keeper doesn’t let his bees swarm – they take all the honey and that hive will never produce surplus that season.
The honey bee over-winters as a colony – unlike the wasp, bumble bee etc who die in the autumn, only over-wintering young mated queens who have the ability to feed themselves and make a nest to start a new colony in spring. The only other insect to winter as a fully functioning colony is the ant. If a worker bee finds a good source of nectar it ‘advertises’ it to he rest of the hive by way of a ‘waggle’dance showing distance and angle to the sun.
There is a local club formed in 1986- Roe Valley Beekeepers which now has 112 members and we have one of the premier honey shows each year in October, held in the Drummond Hotel. The club membership has a wide range of people – from clergy on both sides of the ‘divide’ and from labourers to a County Court judge.
Mo re recently honey has been given to racing dogs, apparently with some success.
Any other data required please contact me a 028777 63472 ( Arthur Rainey)
