Ah, honey, that magical elixir. Put a dollop in your tea, and it will soothe your sore throat or assuage the ache in your heart, or maybe do both at the same time. It’s delicious by the spoonful and is a natural sweetener that adds some food value and calories. Come to think of it, honey and the creatures that produce it are an integral part of our ecosystem. The bees, those intensely focused creatures that dance, tell time, and stop to ask each other for directions, help to pollinate the fruit trees from which they gather their raw materials, thus assuring another generation of primary producers.
You can also make your own honey, with essence of a flower such as clover blossoms or fireweed or rose petals. You just need a huge amount of sugar and some alum. But not too much alum, or you will have something that will hold your spoon upright and also pull out your fillings.
Unlike most food, honey has no shelf life. I have heard it said that the unearthing of one of the Pharoah’s tombs yielded a jar of honey that, while crystallized, was easily reconstituted, and remained delicious and un-poisonous after thousands of years.
Of course, I lack the capacity to conduct such a longitudinal study, but here’s my micro-version of the phenomenon: I recently bumped into a neighbor from many years ago. In reminiscing, I reminded her that twenty-two years ago, when her father-in-law died, she had conducted a small estate sale in the neighborhood. One of the items for sale was a row of gallon jars of honey from the family’s apiary. In the interest of helping her tidy up, we bought three of the jars. On the day of our recent conversation, I reported to her that we still had one of the jars about two-thirds full.
She and I have changed. I am sporting a silver-gray mane that strikes envy into the hearts of artic mammals everywhere; and while she doesn’t look much different to me, I learn that the toddler swinging on her arm is her great-grandchild. That honey, on the other hand, hasn’t aged a day.
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For your further edification:
World’s Oldest Honey – Bee Mission
How Bees Communicate | Ask A Biologist (asu.edu)
How Honeybees Tell Time – Bee Mission
I enjoyed reading this!
I’m glad, and thanks for reading.
Beautiful essay, Evelyn. Do you remember trying to collect enough nectar from honeysuckle to bottle it and sell it?
Oh, indeed I do. I think that was, of all our schemes, the shortest-lived one.
A better financial endeavor was when we raised pigs, and raised chickens to sell the eggs to Daddy for his egg route! When we sold our three pigs, we hit the market just right, and I remember Daddy saying, we should have had a 100 pigs.
So true!
Once during oral reports in science class, I chose bees. In their waggle dance to let other bees know where the honey is, bees from different countries have different dances. I thought that very interesting in spite of the class cynic muttering he had to write that down, with almost audible eye rolls.
That is fascinating, and I didn’t know that. And there is always somebody to do the muttering while the rest of us learn new things!