Spotlight: Honey and Beekeeping (Part 1)

September is National Honey Month, designed to celebrate both honey itself and the practice of beekeeping. Honey is a natural sweetener, made by bees from the nectar of flowers. A bee colony or hive consists of one breeding female, known as the “queen bee,” a few thousand male "drones," and a large population of sterile female "worker bees.” Worker bees leave the hive to collect nectar which is then stored inside the honeycomb. The design of the honeycomb and the constant fanning of the bees' wings causes evaporation, which creates liquid honey. 

Humans have been using honey for a variety of purposes for thousands of years. Cave paintings in Spain dating back 8,000 years depict humans gathering honey from wild bee colonies. The Ancient Egyptians were among the first to practice beekeeping, domesticating bees into mud or clay hives. Egyptians used honey not only as food but also for medicinal purposes, applying it to skin and eye wounds to provide a barrier against infection. When archaeologists excavated King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, they found 3,000-year-old jars of honey that were still edible and sweet.

St. Valentine, a third-century Roman who is well-known as the patron saint of love, is also the patron saint of beekeepers. According to legend, St. Valentine was a beekeeper himself and treated his honeybees with love and gentle care. Even today, beekeepers ask St. Valentine to protect them, bless their hives, and ensure the sweetness of their honey.  

As time progressed, beekeeping techniques advanced, with innovations leading to the use of wooden hives which allowed for easier honey harvesting. Modern beekeeping saw a major breakthrough in 1852 when Lorenzo Langstroth of Massachusetts received a patent for the first movable frame beehive, which made honey extraction less destructive to bee colonies. 

An average modern domesticated beehive has around 50,000 bees and produces approximately 55 pounds of surplus honey each year. Springfield resident Tim Moore became interested in beekeeping at a young age. When he was 11 years old, growing up on the eastside of Springfield, neighbors invited Tim to take a hive from a barn that was being torn down. Tim brought the hive to his parents’ house and began beekeeping in the backyard. The family lived near the Audubon Society’s Adams Wildlife Sanctuary on Clearlake, which provided abundant resources for young Tim’s bees. During his late teenage years, Tim’s other interests replaced beekeeping, but he returned to beekeeping as an adult, once his own children were in school. At one point, he was managing ten hives and enjoyed gifting others with the honey they produced. Tim notes that local beekeepers support and encourage one another and there is a lot of opportunity for apprenticeship. For example, although Tim currently does not maintain any active hives, he is mentoring a beekeeper neighbor to help support local beekeeping. 

While beekeeping is a labor-intensive endeavor, a healthy honey bee population is vital to maintaining our planet. When honey bees gather nectar, they are also performing a critical second function – pollination. Approximately one-third of our human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and honey bees are responsible for 80 percent of this pollination. However, both native and domesticated bee populations are declining due to habitat loss, disease, and the excessive use of pesticides. Simple ways to combat this loss are adding plants that provide food and shelter for pollinators to your yard and adopting pollinator friendly landscape practices, including mowing less frequently and limiting use of herbicides and insecticides. The Pollinator Partnership (www.pollinator.org) provides regional planting guides and other resources for those looking to develop ways to support honeybees.   

To learn more about beekeeping, visit the Illinois State Beekeepers Association website, www.ilsba.com or follow Lincoln Land Beekeepers on Facebook.

Check back in two weeks for Part 2 of this Spotlight on honey and beekeeping when we will discuss the many uses for nature’s sweetener.