Thank you Edible Jersey for reminding me that today is Honey Bee Awareness Day, as proclaimed by the US Department of Agriculture last year. This year’s theme: “Local Honey – Good for you, the bees, and the environment!”
My grandfather kept bees “out back,” so I grew up eating honey and loved to eat warm toast smeared with a piece of fresh, soft, honey-drenched honeycomb. He also used the wax, compressed into balls (maybe he melted it to remove impurities first?), to wax the thread he and my grandmother used for repairing Oriental carpets. I still have a piece of that once-fragrant wax in my sewing basket, a treasured memento of those times.
Bee keeping is in vogue again now, and local honey is highly prized. Bee colony collapse has been a big concern, but scientists and beekeepers are working hard to save the bees. This is, I believe, another case where diversity is key to survival. Just like crops, those little pollinators need diversity in their genetic makeup to spread the risk.
The National Honey Board website is full or information and recipes, so be sure to get your honey on today!
NJ SPICE 