BEE BULLETINS

This slideshow is from February 2008, when I joined my brother Tibor P Szabo and colleague and friend Dan Douma to experience beekeeping in Chile.  We were guests of Francisco Rey who owns and runs Pacific Queens, Sociedad Comercial Rey, and the www.apicultura.cl website. We also visited with Italo Terrezza and his family. Both Francisco and Italo are excellent beekeepers from a very beautiful part of the world.

During my short stay we spent several afternoons queen catching with Francisco’s team of beekeepers near Limache. Tibor and Dan spent the entire season working and visiting in Chile (Tibor’s second full season in Chile and Dan’s first). We were also fortunate to meet a beekeeper named Augustine and to learn about setting up an apiary for wheelchair use and accessible beekeeping.

photo: Italo and Francisco.

photo: Tibor, Augustine, and Francisco.

One of the most reported facts about honey bees:

One mouthful in three of the foods you eat directly or indirectly depends on pollination by honey bees.

This quote comes from a 2004 United States Department of Agriculture Report on honey bee benefits to agriculture and is referenced on countless honey bee-related web sites and news bulletins.

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Another commonly reported fact is that around the world we are experiencing decreasing honey bee populations:

Canada: Where have the bees gone? (Thanks Gary for posting this to our facebook site.)

New Zealand: Bee alert and alarmed

UK: Battle to save the honey bee

The solution?

Keep bees.

Plant nectar and pollen producing plants.

Support local beekeepers.

I discovered these sites while investigating beekeeping in ancient times and want to share them.

Honey bees in art date back to the Paleolithic era. You can see a Paleolithic cave painting on this site.

Man’s relationship with honeybees is as ancient as man himself.

This is photo from Beelore depicts beekeeping hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt:

Also from ancient Egypt:

When the Sun weeps a second time, and lets fall water from his eyes, it is changed into working bees; they work in the flowers of each kind, and honey and wax are produced instead of water.

From a first millennium BCE magical text, pSalt 825
S. Birch, Egyptian Magical Text, in S. Birch ed., Records of the Past, Vol.6, 1876

Source: http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/beekeeping.htm

We are spreading the word about honey bees on Facebook.  If you use Facebook and want to follow our stories or engage in bee-related discussion, you can now become a fan of Honey Bees.

This is why I have Häagen-Dazs ice cream in my freezer right now: