By GreenHouse17 Staff

The past two years have been tough for the bees on our farm, but we have bee-gun again this month! Our staff and residents were so excited about the arrival of our new bees a few days ago. A bunch of us even gathered around their new home on the back of our property to welcome them. Although we eventually hope to harvest the honey to use in our Handmade By Survivors products, the pollination they’ll be doing on the farm in the meantime is even sweeter. We’ll be writing more about their important contribution to our flowers and vegetable gardens really soon, but today we just want to celebrate them for “bee-ing” amazing:

  • Bees have given us some fun sayings and idioms like “the bee’s knees,” “a bee in the bonnet,” “busy as a bee,” and all of the bee-related puns we just couldn’t resist in today’s blog post.
  • The sound of bees buzzing is like music to our ears. It takes more than 11,000 flaps per minute to make that beautiful summer noise.
  • Bees use interpretive dance to communicate! Their “round” dance means nectar is near, and the “waggle” dance means it’s a little farther away. We might try this technique during our next staff meeting.
  • Bees have an innate GPS that always knows the shortest path to the next destination. Siri could learn a thing or two from them for sure!
  • Bees are an inspiration. Yeats, Dickinson, Tennyson, Alcott, Blake, Kipling, Keats, Frost and Shakespeare have all written poems about them.
  • Honey heals. Most people know about the healing power of honey for cuts and allergies, but we were surprised to learn raw honey and royal jelly are being researched as a treatment for multiple sclerosis.
  • Bees might recognize us. Researchers have found they use a process called “configural processing” to distinguish the face of a person who was providing them with sugar water. Oh, how we hope this is true!
  • Bees are a metaphor for so many life lessons: hard work, socialization, teamwork, efficiency, saving for a rainy day, adaptation, evolution. If we are kind to them, they’re sure to teach us many more lessons in the future.

These are just a few of the reasons we are loving our bees! We’d love to know more about why you love them, too.