Saturday, August 16, 2014

Have a honey chipper day!

Golden delicious honey! Oh, my! Nothing better than homemade biscuits piping hot right from the oven, sliced open, smeared with butter, toasted open-faced, then, slathered in honey! YUM!

August 16 is...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mommamia/2387687078/

Photo: mommammia (Flickr)

National Honey Bee Day

Buzz About Bees

In 2009, beekeepers in the USA petitioned for and obtained a proclamation from the USDA for an official day to honor honey bees and beekeeping. A day of honor was designated as Honey Bee Awareness Day. The original date of observation was the 22nd of August, 2009 (the fourth Saturday of August) but has since settled more permanently on the third Saturday of August. Today the celebration is recognized as National Honey Bee Day, aka World Honey Bee Day.

There are many reasons to celebrate the honey bee. Honey bee awareness enthusiasts will likely put a bee in your bonnet and say this is not so much a day to celebrate honey bees, as it is to promote their involvement in sustainable agriculture and farming. Others promote the wholesome goodness of the honey produced by the honey bee.

A Bit of Honey Bee History...

Bees have been producing honey as they do today for at least 100 million years (since the Cretaceous period). It is their source of survival during the cooler winter period when they are unable to forage and there are fewer flowers from which to gather food. As for human consumption, depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date to 15,000 years ago. Around 4,500 years ago, efforts to domesticate bees are shown in Egyptian art. Simple hives and smoke were used with honey being stored in jars, some of which were found in the tombs of pharaohs such as Tutankhamun. It wasn't until the 18th century that European understanding of the colonies and biology of bees allowed the construction of the moveable comb hive so that honey could be harvested without destroying the entire colony. Source: en.wikipedia.com

Why do bees make honey?
Are they trying to help satisfy the human's sweet tooth?
Not hardly...

On this day, bee lovers everywhere decorate their gardens with lavender, borage and marjoram, the bee’s knees in pollinator lures. If you have the time and patience, bake some honey chippers and make your own honey fruit cobbler. And because you’ve been as busy as a bee all day, sit back and watch Hitchcock’s ‘The Bees’. You’ll count your blessings honey bees are nothing like South American killer bees!

Have a honey chipper of a day!