NEWSLETTER #28 (English) from Urs & Izzy: Street Market and more science
- Izzy the busy bee....
- Sep 8, 2024
- 4 min read
September & October 2024 (Issue #28)
Dear honey lovers, A lot of you know us... from our honey home-deliveries. But, if you don't know us, and want to change that (and have some fun on a street market), come and visit us! We will be at the Witikon Dorfmarkt Saturday the 14th of September (yes, next week!) from 9h00 a.m. until 17h00. Apart from us, there will be also other cool stands, as well as children's entertainments, family's garage sales, music and food stalls... and it's free!
It will be a pleasure to meet you (or see you again)! We will have pots of honey - of course, but also honey-on-the-comb, lip balm, and honey-butter that you can try with our home-baked bio-bread.
Are you enjoying the newsletter? Don't be shy, tell us at baerenhonig@gmx.ch , or WhatsApp us, if you prefer. We'd love to hear from you!
News from the Beehives
We beekeepers don't stand still after the honey harvest. There are a lot of things to be done during fall -- from deep cleaning of the beehives, to checking the health of the bees, melting the old frames' wax, imprinting the new wax middle sheets and cutting them to measure (like in the photo), and making all of the carpenter's repairs to the beehives. Yes... beekeepers have to learn to be jack-of-all-trades! Of course it is not rocket science, but it takes time, patience, and love for the little animals. There is one more thing to be done now - a harsh (but necessary) decision, of 'rationalizing' the colonies. That means, if there are colonies that are very weak, we might take action by killing the queen and merging the bees with another colony -- because a weak colony would not survive the winter. Tough decision, but very needed.
And we also prepare for the annual Witikon market! We only go to that one market in the year, so we have to make all of the preparations ahead of time, to make sure that we are ready to be seen in public. :-D
Where is my Honey...?
Your honey is waiting for you!
We have liquid spring honey, summer honey (currently half-solid, as it is rich in the melezitose described in the last newsletter), wild honey-on-the-comb, and solid melezitose-honey-on-the-comb. So this year we have the full range, for your tea, your bread or your cheese! Come to the Witikon market to get it... or use the lazy approach... ask for it via whatsapp and we will deliver it to your mailbox.
and.... by the way, of course we have left the bees their fair share of honey, promised!
Facts & Figures
Our last bimonthly newsletter triggered several questions on melezitose honey. Obviously we were not entirely clear... So let us answer here some of the questions that we received from you:
Q: ' Do you have summer honey' ? Yes, we do, this years' summer harvest was difficult, but we extracted some honey. This year's summer honey is almost SOLID, and has a milder taste than usual.
Q: Is melezitose honey the same as cement honey? Yes, it is -- one is the more scientific term, and the other is more common expression.
Q: 'Can you eat melezitose honey'? Of course!!! Melezitose honey is 80% normal honey, and 20% ' super-honey' (well, ok, it is not 'super-honey', but it contains a tri-saccharid instead of a di-saccharid, as explained in the previous newsletter). The good news is that melezitose is a pre-biotic, so it is good for our gut's health.
Q: 'Will melezitose honey become creamy or solid'? It will likely become solid - and fast! Of course, you can still eat it, and, like any honey, if you warm it up, it will become liquid again (for a while).
Q: 'Does melezitose honey occurs only with summer honey?' Yes, melezitose occurs seldomly (in Switzerland, only every 20 years or so), yet, when it occurs, it occurs only in honeydew, i.e. on summer honey.
Did you know that...?
... bees get a buzz from caffeine, like us humans? Plants produce toxic chemicals as a defense to prevent animals from eating them. Plant toxins have been used by us also for ages – we use them as medicines or drugs, we make tea or coffee to extract them, we add them as flavorings or spices.
Bees and other pollinators have coevolved with plants over millions of years, providing a means of reproduction for plants while being ‘paid’ by plants to provide this service with food in the form of nectar & pollen. The quality of this payment – how rich the nectar is and what nutrients it provides – is what matters most to pollinators. They learn the scents & colors associated with flowers that have good quality and seek out flowers with the same traits.
What you don't know probably, is that coffee and citrus flowers have nectar that contains the plant toxin, caffeine. Scientific studies have found that low doses of caffeine, like those found in nectar, enhance the bee’s ability to remember a floral scent and associate it with food. Bees would readily drink nectar with caffeine in it. The responses of neurons in the bee’s brain were amplified when the brain was stimulated by caffeine – similar to what happens with humans.
Coffee and citrus plants use caffeine as a means of manipulating the brains of bees – so that they think that flowers are more rewarding – providing a reliable way of transmitting pollen from one coffee flower to another. Nature is soooo smart!
Swiss Bees
This month's issue of Agroscope (the publication of the Swiss agricultural research institute) talks about invasive species and selection of natural enemies to control pests. As you know, varroa is a bee parasite, but also an invasive species - it arrived from China in the 1970's-. Varroa mites transmit the wing-deforming virus which weakens and can destroy entire bee colonies. A natural enemy of varroa are pseudoscorpions, a species endemic in Europe. Like real scorpions and spiders, pseudoscorpions belong to the group of arachnids. They feed on varroa, like in the photo! For this reason, they are being studied by scholars in Germany and in New Zealand. The problem is that pseudoscorpions, even if they look like a bully, are very delicate creatures, so scientists are now looking into using the venom that they inject to kill the Varroa mites, to develop protective treatments for the bees.
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