Why Local Honey?

Beekeepers offer you pure honey, direct from the hive. Just the way the bees made it. This is complete honey, with pollen grains and enzymes that the bees produce locally. Honey includes pollen from flowers in the area where the bees work. Natural enzymes, pollen, vitamins, minerals and amino acids are found in Beekeeper's Honey. When honey is processed commercially, it is finely filtered and heated. Filtering removes most pollen particles and heat can change the color, taste and destroy vitamins. Additives have even been discovered in commercially processed honey found in stores.



What is Honey?

Honey is primarily composed of fructose, glucose and water. It also contains other sugars as well trace enzymes, minerals, vitamins and amino acids. (Complete information concerning honey's chemical makeup and nutritional content will be available very soon on this web site.)

Honey is "manufactured" in one of the world's most efficient factories, the beehive. Bees may travel as far as 5 miles and visit more than two million flowers to gather enough nectar to make just a pound of honey.

The color and flavor of honey differ depending on the bees' nectar source (the blossoms). In fact, there are more than 300 unique kinds of honey in the United States, originating from such diverse floral sources as Clover, Eucalyptus and Orange Blossoms. In general, lighter colored honeys are mild in flavor; while darker honeys are usually more robust in flavor.




Pollination Basics

Honeybees and Bumblebees

Pollination by definition is the transfer of pollen from a stamen to an ovule. Pollen is a mass of microspores which give rise to the male gametophyte of a seed plant. In everyday language pollination is the process by which the male component of a plant or flower is transferred to the female part resulting in a seed. Pollen is eaten by various adult insects especially those belonging to the orders Hymenoptera, Diptera and Coleoptera. Pollen forms an important part of the larval food of solitary and social bees whose bodies have been well adapted for pollen collection. (Free 1970) Honeybees and Bumblebees possess special adaptation on the hind legs called backib for transporting pollen back to the larva. So certain aforementioned orders of insects collect pollen to feed the young. This collection performs an act which enables the plant to reproduce as well. This phenomenon referred to as the co-evolution of insects and flowering plants has been ongoing for millions of years. There is an ongoing debate here in the Northeast regarding the efficiency of bumblebees versus honeybees, regarding fruit crops such as blueberries and cranberries. Scientists who have studied the mechanisms involved advocate the bumblebee as the co-evolutionary partner for blueberries. However, bumblebees exist in colonies of 30 to 50 individuals at best. It must be remembered that blueberry and cranberry plants as they occur in the wild can only be described as infrequent, which supports there co-evolution with bumblebees.