Honey has a chronological progression that starts from early February to mid-March with the biggest national honey event of the year found in California. You might say, why is honey in California important to my neighborhood? The answer is simple. The commercial beekeeper, coming to California, in the commercial production of honey is directly related to the hobbyist beekeeper in your community and the commercial beekeeper in your community, because the domesticated beehive or the feral bee colony in your neighborhood is responsible for one third of everything we eat. The commercial beekeeper and the honey that he produces is the proving ground for all research, experiments and usually first alerts for disease or Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). These commercial beekeepers are the proving grounds directly helping the remaining national beekeepers to stay in business and to maintain healthy hives. The biggest honey event of the year in the nation, is the California almond pollination season with the arrival of 25 BILLION honeybees. California has this many more honeybees already within the state.

Over one million honeybee hives are used to pollinate the US almond crop that can exceed $1.9 billion this year. Half of these honeybee hives will have to be imported from states as far away as Florida. Finding enough honey hives to pollinate the almond crop becomes more difficult each year. Each year the almond growers plant more almond crops, and the beekeepers have to deal with a barrage of bee diseases such as mites, beetles, foul brood, wax moths and CCD, but the absolute worst is bee rustling. An establish beehive is worth $185 to $225 and the pollination fee is averaging $140 to $150. The bee hive robberies have become epidemic nationwide. Help the beekeeper, if you see strange activity around bee hives at night call 911. Honey production requires that the beehive be stimulated early in the year to increase the number of bees in the hive. For commercial beekeepers this “buildup” of bees for honey gathering is accomplished with the almond pollination season. The honey gathered for this early build up is completely consumed by the newly hatched bees in the hive. Bees need pollen as well as honey to feed the newborn honeybees. The benefit of the honeybees for this pollination event starts with honey bees gathering pollen from an almond flower and depositing the pollen on the next flower to fertilize the seed (almond nut), which in turn gives the tree a signal to build the fruit around the new almond nut.

Next, bee hives are moved to Oregon, Washington, Texas, Kansas and other midwestern states, on up to the Dakotas, Montana, Utah and finally back to Florida or Texas fto pollinate ”winter crops”, produce honey and a stay for a warm winter. This pollination migration for other nuts, vegetable and fruit crops such as cabbage, spinach, squash, apples, cherries, apricots, avocados, strawberries, blackberries raspberries, melons, sunflowers, grasses and other crops that produce seeds for next year’s harvest is repeated every year to produce American honey and the bounty of food we require.. After the bees have increased their population in the early spring to adequate numbers to harvest surplus honey, they begin to store more honey than they consume.

Surplus honey is the honey bees will not need to consume to survive the winter. The surplus honey is harvested by the beekeeper. This Honey crop accounts for only 60% of the beekeeper’s annual income. However this is where you come in. By supporting your local beekeeper, you are ensuring that the food that you will need next year will be available. Researchers have found that honey is far more healthier than sugar. Use honey in your cooking recipes, add honey to your dining table and look for healthy honey remedies. You can see that honey is a source of survival in your neighborhood. Support your beekeepers, eat more honey!
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Benefits of Honey have far reaching affects on all of civilization beyond remedies and medicinal use. The honey bee is preparing the beehive with winter stores to survive the cold months that are coming. The first benefits of honey seldom considered are: the gathered honey benefits the bees the most, without this winter food the beehive would die.
The most thought of benefits of honey are the pleasant dining experiences and tea sweetening of honey. The commercial benefits of honey are found in the baking industry. Honey is the sweetener of choice for breads, cakes and pastries. The obvious benefits of honey are the sources of income for the beekeepers all over the world that keep the real benefits of honey enjoyed year to year.

The real benefits of honey come as a byproduct of honey gathering. Alfalfa hay and grass has to be pollinated to grow a crop. Without alfalfa, beef and dairy cow products would be in short supply. Pollination is the greatest of all benefits of honey! One third of the world’s grasses, fruits, nuts, beans and vegetables must be pollinated every year to assure that man can eat the products grown AFTER pollination. Our foods are benefits of honey.

Honey bee disaster has come and gone for years. There has been mites, viruses, intestinal diseases and the hybrid of Africanized bees to diminish our honey production and limit the benefits of honey. Most of the causes were identified and hybrid bees would attack the genetically weak links or weather would improve for the honey bee disaster to wane, but not so this time!

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has struck worldwide. The beekeeper can lose from 30% to 90% of his beehives in 12 months. It has been theorized that the intense use of cell phones confuse the bee’s built in navigation system causing the worst honey bee disaster in recorded history. Even though Haagen-Dazs has donated a half million dollars for research and Penn State University is working full time to crack the code of mega honey bee loss we are about to face the 3rd year in a row of expediential loss of beehives and their sharing the benefits of honey with mankind.

Gourmet honeys are benefits of honey. Digestion problems, burns, and remedies flourish as benefits of honey and will be addressed in later articles but for today we wanted to alert you to support the ongoing research for healthy bees that can only result in more benefits of honey.

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Honey shortage worldwide is caused by numerous influences. Bad weather, bad nectar flow due to bad weather, poor colony buildup prior to honey flow, hive decline and NOT AS MANY BEES as we used to have all add up to honey shortage and higher honey prices.

How will the honey shortage affect the average consumer that says, “Oh it doesn’t affect me, I don’t eat honey”? Ice cream is sweetened with honey. The biggest consumer of honey is bakeries. These industries receive the fuel cost increase and now the sweetener cost increase. The honey shortage is only the FIRST indicator that we have a HUGE problem. It is true that many people do not consume the preferable healthy honey for sweetening. However poor weather and hive decline directly affect our food sources globally! Many fruits and vegetables are dependent on honey bees to pollinate the plants before a fruit or vegetable can begin to develop. Without honey bees pollinating the flora our food sources would shrink to 1/2 in two years worldwide. We must discover the cause of hive decline before disaster falls.

Honey shortages will continue to drive the cost of honey up. China and Brazil, the two largest exporters of honey to the US declare that poor weather and hive decline has caused poor crops of honey again. To prevent the global honey shortage from getting out of hand we need a bumper crop of honey in 2008. Honey shortage can be overcome if there are regional bumper honey crops. However our honey reserves have been tapped and now need to be replenished. Gourmet Honey, Raw Honey and monofloral honey that sell for premium prices because of the extensive labor to produce will see prices go even higher as less honey is produced.

To compound the honey shortage, China honey was found to have traces of antibiotics in the honey and this has caused the Chinese honey to be banned for sale in Britain and the US. Most supermarket honey is a blend of 75% foreign honey with the remainder gathered domestically. Fewer beekeepers are in the honey business as the result of hard work and low pay for long hours. Support your local beekeeper, buy specialty gourmet honey and raw honey to show your support for such a vital link in your future food source!
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