Buzzy As A Bee
I’m sure it’s a scientific phenomena and has a long Latin name but I’ve discovered that ever since I went to the formative meeting of the Eastern Shore Beekeeper’s Guild I’m noticing “bee stuff” everywhere. I’m also sure the ” bee stuff” was there all along — I just wasn’t paying any attention to it. ( Incidentally, one of the great things about living here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia is that just about any Northampton County home is less than an hour’s drive to Virginia Beach. This happy circumstance gives us the incomparable lifestyle of residing in a relaxed rural area but with fast, easy access to metropolitan shopping, cultural and culinary amenities.) So when we were at the Virginia Beach Barnes and Noble bookstore last week ( B&N is my home away from home when I visit Virginia Beach for our ” lunch and shop” trip a couple times a month, Home Depot is my husband’s ) I noticed a display unit featuring “Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper”” by Marina Marchese. It’s the story of her career change from advertising to beekeeping and honey marketing — I bought it out of sheer curiosity (definitely after a real estate career spanning decades, it’s a little late for a career change, even if I wanted one ). Browsing the Mystery section (I’m completely addicted to good mystery novels) yielded three novels by Laurie King, Sherlock Holmes reprises, — “God of the Hive” , “Language of Bees” and “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” , all of which I left on the shelf because I prefer my Holmes and Watson straight up from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. More “bee stuff” included a program on PBS last month about Emily Dickinson who apparently wrote nearly 50 poems featuring bees, including one entitled “To Make A Prairie It Takes A Clover and One Bee”, which is surely an optimistic concept. That led me to search Google Scholar tool on Google for detailed info on bee poems, of which, as it turns out, there are so many more than anyone (well, me) would have ever guessed. Whole books have been written about bee imagery in works by Sylvia Plath.
So then I got curious about how many books on beekeeping are listed on Amazon.com . Its advanced search yielded 589 results including available books about bees and beekeeping in such far flung corners of the earth as Russia, Ireland , Great Britain– even one about beekeeping in Cuba. Plus a “Beekeeping for Dummies”. Who knew ?? From there the obvious next step was, of course, some research on what bees are generally kept for in the first place– HUNY, as Pooh Bear would insist !
It's Thyme 4 HUNY
283 results on Amazon for cooking with honey, one of the most seemingly interesting being a new book by May Berenbaum, coming out in August, entitled “Honey, I’m Homemade: Sweet Treats from the Beehive across the Centuries and Around the World”. I will definitely be buying a copy when it comes out.
Surprisingly, the most interesting things I learned about honey I found perusing www.ScienceDaily.com , a website I love and check out several times each week. First, a vocabulary lesson — I learned that any honey which comes primarily from any one single plant species ( think delicious orange blossom or sourwood honey ) is designated as “manuka” honey. But the really fascinating articles were about new medical uses of honey. Because so many bacteria have become resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics, apparently doctors are now sometimes turning to honey as a wound dressing because of its strong anti-bacterial properties, so strong that recent laboratory tests showed that honey can kill the MRSA bacteria. (I’m impressed ! ) It seems that in centuries past, honey was routinely applied to wounds to prevent infection (never knew that). Now researchers have discovered that these ancient home remedies have a scientific basis. The strong antibacterial properties in honey derive from a protein, recently isolated and named “defensin-1”, which is the active ingredient which kills bacteria. It seems that bees manufacture defensin-1 as part of their immune system defense and then add it to their honey. Scientists now believe that the isolation of this protein will lead to new treatments for burns and skin infections as well as “medical grade” honeys. So, instead of putting aloe on my next little burn, I think I’ll try some huny instead. And to think that I’m becoming aware of a whole new world of bees and honey because I decided, strictly on the spur of the moment, to attend a little Beekeeper Guild meeting in Nassawadox. As they say, live and learn.