Now that everything is beginning to bloom here in Texas, and being that tomorrow is the first day of Spring, let's talk Honey, Beeswax, Sugar and all the wonderful things we enjoy because we have the Honey Bee.

     Call me crazy. One minute I'm blogging on home inspection, next  time Texas birds and now blogging about Bee's. The last few years we have seen fewer honey bees buzzing around our garden. Let's just hope this is just a cycle and our honey bees will soon return.

Did you Know?   

 Honeybees everywhere are disappearing. They aren't dying in their hives. They're leaving and not returning, absconding the hive only to leave it with a queen and a small brood.

In the 1898 and again in both the 1960's and 1970's, bee colonies experienced what was known as "dwindling disease." But since the 1980's, problems for bee keepers have increased. Its become harder and harder to maintain bees than ever before as beekeepers struggle to fight parasites and malnutrition.

Mites have been a problem, particularly since the Varroa mites were unintentionally introduced from Asia in the 1980's. Varroa mites suck the blood of bees, weakening and shortening their lifespan.

The mites have nearly eliminated feral colonies of honey bees, which used to pollinate many vegetable crops. Many farmers must now rent bees for pollination, which has contributed to the growth of large-scale beekeeping.

So what's the big deal about bees anyway?

The honeybee is more than just a source of honey for sopapillas, marzipan,  and fried chicken -it's essential to pollinating crops for human consumption. Bees pollinate billions of dollars worth of crops each year, including cucumbers, squash, almonds, apples, cherries, strawberries, melons, peanuts, cotton, soybean, and many, many more.

Here is a small description on Pollination.

POLLINATION

     Since many of our pollinators are now scarce, we are dependent on the honey bee to pollinate our crops. Pollination starts when a field bee crawls around a plant blossom. The honey bee is dusted with pollen. Then the field bee flies over to another blossom with the pollen in its hair. When the bee lands, the pollen falls onto this blossom's stigma. Now a fruit, vegetable or other crop can grow.

     Farmers actually rented colonies of bees to pollinate their crops. Even though other insects pollinate crops too, honey bees are one of the few that are synchronized and managed with the development of crops. If honey bees didn't pollinate, crops wouldn't be able to grow. Without the pollination from the honey bees there would be one third less crops in the world than there is now.

Here is a good link that is easy to understand very descriptiive about the Honey Bee

http://www.insecta-inspecta.com/bees/honey/index.html