Not an essential lockdown purchase I know but I bought a bee box from Aldi a week ago. I was one of the lucky ones, they buzzed off the supermarket shelves within moments.
Yesterday, I saw a bee hovering round it for a few minutes before cautiously entering one of the little wooden cylinders inside. It was a delight to see that it really was attracting them.
Since the lockdown I’ve got much closer to nature, am loving being in the garden, listening to the birds and watching the butterflies which seem so much more abundant.
The butterflies are beautiful and there are definitely more species around than usual. The birdsong is lovely when you can actually hear it now the distant drone of the motorway traffic is no more.
It’s the bees though I love the most, whenever I think about them I feel just a little spiritual, they truly are a miracle.
I’m not religious and I don’t believe there is a god but as I’ve grown older I’ve started to believe that there must be more to life than this. That we are on a journey, we have some kind of purpose and bees are part of my evidence for this theory.
I believe there is a creator, an imperfect one. They created this wonderful planet, this amazing ecosystem and then things started to go wrong, the flora wouldn’t sustain. That’s where bees come in, consider these 10 facts about these amazing creatures.
- Honey bees must gather nectar from two million flowers to make one pound of honey.
- One bee has to fly about 90,000 miles – three times around the globe – to make one pound of honey.
- A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
- The bee’s brain is oval in shape and about the size of a sesame seed, yet it has a remarkable capacity to learn and remember things. For example, it is able to make complex calculations on distance travelled and foraging efficiency.
- Honey bees communicate with one another by dancing.
- Honey has always been highly regarded as a medicine. It is thought to help with everything from sore throats and digestive disorders to skin problems and hay fever.
- Honey has antiseptic properties and was historically used as a dressing for wounds and a first aid treatment for burns and cuts.
- Honey bees have been producing honey in the same way for 150 million years.
- Honey lasts an incredibly long time. An explorer who found a 2000 year old jar of honey in an Egyptian tomb said it tasted delicious!
- Honey is incredibly healthy and includes enzymes, vitamins, minerals. It’s the only food that contains “pinocembrin”, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.
Daft perhaps but when I’m amongst nature I just can’t but shift this feeling, I have a similar sense about worms and dew.
I’m not the only one who thinks like this, bees feature heavily in The Bible, the Qu’ran and other religious texts. It makes me think somehow that these amazing creatures were meant to bee!