The honeybee is a miraculous creature that has a large variety of abilities and a primary contributor in helping to sustain our ecosystem. Here we will highlight several reasons why honeybees are so important:
-Pollination: Honeybees are responsible for pollinating our food crops and wild flora throughout our world. The honey bee will travel up to 2 miles when foraging for pollen and in some circumstances even further distances. When the honeybees are on their flight journeys, it is then that the fertilization of our food crops takes place. Honeybees alone pollinate roughly 80 percent of all flowering plants, which also includes 90 different food crops. Without the existence of the honeybee, our crop productions would be depleted, resulting in devastating food loss. The USDA has estimated that approximately one-third of the total human diet is derived directly or indirectly from insect-pollinated plants. In addition to crop pollination, honey bees pollinate wild plants, which are a food source for many animals, insects and birds. Without the existence of wild plants, sources of food for many animals in nature would disappear as well as our oxygen would become greatly diminished. So the next time you sit down to enjoy your next meal, bee sure to stop and thank God and a honeybee!
-Honey Production: When the worker bees are on their foraging flights, they collect nectar, pollen and water. While these substances are necessary for maintaining the inside of the hive, one of the things we get to enjoy outside of the hive is the ever delicious honey. After the bee collects the nectar, it is then broken down into simple sugars and stored inside of the honeycomb. The constant fanning of the honeybees' wings creates an evaporation effect, which in turn creates honey. A honey bee hive is the only insect capable of producing honey and on average, a healthy honeybee hive can produce approximately 55 pounds of surplus honey per year. This sweet and edible liquid is packed full of rich vitamins, enzymes, and proteins, which has proven to be effective in numerous medical scenarios. This leads us to the next topic below.
-Medicinal Benefits of Honey: As mentioned above, honey has many beneficial ingredients making it an energy rich food, also serving as a popular supplement when related to health. Honey has been widely used to treat high cholesterol, throat infections, fatigue, eczema, eye diseases, and bronchial cough, to name a few. It is also a recommended product for strengthening capillaries, increasing the rate of recovery, healing wounds and bacterial infections, stimulating organ function, and so much more. Honey (raw, unfiltered and unaltered) is an all-natural product that serves as an antioxidant, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antiproliferative (inhibits cell growth) and antimetastatic. Other bi-products of honey that are commonly distributed are bee pollen and bee wax. With the long history of the health benefits that can be related directly to the implementation of honey in the human diet, it is a must-have in your "medicine cabinet."
-Farming & Income: The saying is true, farmers make the world go round. Farmers around the world are responsible for supplying humans (roughly 7.8 billion humans) with food for daily consumption, which is typically produced in cultivated plant crops. Cultivated plant crops that require pollination in order to bear fruits, vegetables, wheat, flowers, etc., are owned by both commercial and smaller-scale farmers, who rely completely on crop production as a source of income. In an international survey that was completed in 2016, it was estimated that the annual global production of food that depends on pollination is between $235 and $577 billion. These farming operations also open numerous employment opportunities to individuals around the world. In the United States, the added value to agriculture from honey bee pollination is more than $9 billion annually, and many beekeepers earn extra income from renting colonies for pollination (Source: American Beekeeping Federation). These figures prove the positive impact honeybees have on not only our environment, but our economy.
