We often take nature for granted. We don’t think about the pivotal role that all of life’s creatures play. However, World Honey Bee Day gives you the perfect opportunity to pay honor to the incredible honey bee. Read on to discover everything you need to know about this day, as well as the critical role that honey bees play in our everyday lives.
Learn about World Honey Bee Day
World Honey Bee Day is an awareness day whereby honey bee enthusiasts, beekeeping associations and clubs, and beekeepers celebrate the honey bee. It is a day to recognize the contribution that honey bees make to our everyday lives, as well as learning about the different steps that we can take in order to protect this vital species. On World Honey Bee Day, we also pay homage to beekeepers. After all, it is their efforts that make sure that there are healthy and well-managed bees to pollinate crops.
The health benefits of honey
Of course, honey bees provide us with honey, and this is one of the many reasons why we should be thankful for them! Honey is a golden, thick liquid, which is produced by bees using the nectar of plants that are flowering. The kind of flowers that bees visit will impact the texture, smell, and taste of the honey, resulting in different types of honey, including orange blossom, clover, acacia, and manuka honey.
There are a lot of nutritional benefits that are associated with adding a bit of honey to your diet. High-quality honey offers a number of benefits because of the antioxidants that are included. These include phenolic compounds, such as flavonoids, as well as organic acids. The antioxidants that are found in honey have been linked to lowering the risk of strokes, heart attacks, and some forms of cancer. They are also believed to assist in terms of eye health.
There have also been studies that have shown that honey can help to improve your cholesterol levels. If you have high LDL cholesterol levels, then you are going to be at a greater risk of having heart disease. This sort of cholesterol plays a massive role in atherosclerosis, which is the fatty buildup in your arteries that can cause strokes and heart attacks as well. There are more and more studies that are showing that honey can help to enhance your cholesterol levels. This is because it significantly raises the good HDL cholesterol while lowering the total of bad LDL cholesterol.
Honey cannot only benefit you in terms of consuming it, but it has been used for many years as a topical treatment for healing burns and wounds. In fact, this can be dated back to Ancient Egypt. Researchers have concluded that the healing powers of honey come from the anti-inflammatory and antibacterial effects it has, as well as its ability to nourish the tissue that surrounds the wounded area.
Bees are disappearing
Bees are critical to our daily living, yet they are in decline on a worldwide scale. This is because they face a number of different threats. The use of toxic pesticides is one of these threats. They are also at risk due to habitat loss, as there has been an increase in invasive farming methods and urban developments, meaning that places that honey bees used to call home do not exist anymore. In honor of World Honey Bee Day, it is good to do your bit in order to raise awareness regarding the risks that honey bees all around the world face and the steps that we can take in order to help them. You can begin by researching this issue so that you can find more information about the different challenges that bees face and the reasons why their population is on the decline. By doing this, you will then be able to educate others and we can all do our bit to make sure that the number of bees starts to increase again, rather than decline.
History of World Honey Bee Day
World Honey Bee Day, previously known as Honey Bee Awareness Day, is an idea put together by beekeepers in the USA, who petitioned the USDA in 2009 for an official day to honor honey bees and beekeeping. A few years down the line, people across the globe are holding a date of observation every year.
The organizers of the event, on the concept of the World Honey Bee Day, have said:
How to celebrate World Honey Bee Day
Honey Bee awareness enthusiasts will likely put a bee in your bonnet and say this is not so much a day to celebrate honey bees, as it is to promote their involvement in sustainable farming.
On this day, bee lovers everywhere decorate their gardens with lavender, borage, and marjoram, the bee’s knees in pollinator lures. If you have the time and patience, bake some honey chippers and make your own honey fruit cobbler.
We also recommend that you take the time to learn more about the honey bee on this day and how we can all do our bit in order to provide them with a supportive environment. When we plant orchards, wildflowers, and other types of flowering plants, we are supporting pollinators, which includes honey bees. Honey bees depend on the nectar of different plants in order to survive. We also need to recognize that we depend on honey bees for our own survival. After all, if they did not pollinate, a lot of the nutritious plants that we need would not reproduce. It’s all about the circle of life, and we should do our bit to help other specious along the way.
Another way to celebrate World Honey Bee Day is by enjoying a honey-based treat. There are lots of different options for you to choose from. Whether you’re looking for a tasty dessert or you want to incorporate honey into your main meal, we have got you covered. Here are some tasty suggestions to consider: honey-roast confit of duck, honey cake, vanilla and honey madeleines, stir-fried pork with honey and ginger, salted honey fudge and chocolate tart, honey mustard grilled salmon, homemade crumpets with burnt honey butter, and crispy honey buffalo wings. Is your mouth watering yet?
And because you’ve been as busy as a bee all day, sit back and watch Hitchcock’s ‘The Bees’. You’ll count your blessings honey bees are nothing like South American killer bees!