The Good Life – July-August 2017

up of honey and pollen. This is the
difference that will turn one female
larva into a queen or an average
worker bee.
Queens-in-training stay on a strict diet
of royal jelly, but that’s not the only
reason queens end up larger than
the rest of the bees in their colonies.
As they develop ovaries, instead of a
venom sack or a stinger, they expand.
With the help of the worker bees,
the first to hatch kills the other
contenders for the throne. However,
the bees won’t treat her as the queen
until she’s mated.
What is the job of the drones?
The only purpose in life for drones,
or male bees, is to mate with a virgin
queen. After 15-18 drones have mated
with her, those drones die and she
officially begins her reign as queen of
the hive.
As the bees begin to prepare for
surviving winter, worker bees drag
any remaining drones out of the hive
and force them to starve to better
sustain their winter supply of honey.
What a brutal bee world we live in.
Why is beeswax so expensive?
It takes 15 pounds of honey for a
honeybee to make 1 pound of wax.
That’s, like, 30 8 oz. mason jars filled
with honey to make one brick of
beeswax. Beeswax not only smells
delicious, it’s supposed to emit
negative ions that improve air quality.
From lotions to lip balms and candles
to furniture polish, beeswax has
hundreds of uses.
Sweet Tips:
If your honey crystalizes, it’s still good.
Honey never expires. To turn your
honey into a liquid again, just place
the jar in warm water in a saucepan
over a stove.
When you’re buying honey, make
sure it says it’s a product of the USA.
Imported honey doesn’t have to follow
the same standards. •
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