Organic honey has become very popular in the market today and one of the reasons why the demand has risen is because the number of bees has declined globally. This is something that should concern us all because bees are very important; for instance, they are the largest pollinators in the world. To help with this issue, many bee farmers today are switching to the production of organic honey.

Organic honey is ‘clean honey’ so to speak. For a beekeeper to get organic honey as the end product, they have to control where the bees go to get their nectar. This is not easy because a bee farmer will have to be sure that all flowers that the bees get their nectar from are organic. Keep in mind that in one hour a honey bee can fly up to 15 miles. If you are an experienced farmer, then you know one thing that affects honey production is hive location; the less the bees travel, the better.

So, How Is Organic Honey Made?

Well, it’s made like all the other honey, but there is a catch. For honey to be termed as organic, it has to come from a bee farm that adheres to the organic livestock standards as per the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This means that bee farmers have to follow and maintain a particular standard with regards to honey production, processing, and packaging.

Perhaps it has been hard for you to tell the difference between raw honey and organic honey. Now that you know what organic honey is, let’s talk about raw honey. Raw honey is unheated, unpasteurized, and unprocessed honey. Raw honey is honey taken straight from the extractor. It can also be obtained by straining and settling.

There are a lot of products that a bee farmer can get from beekeeping. One such product is organic bee pollen. Pollen is the food that young bees eat. Bee pollen is a product that is increasing in popularity, mainly because of its health benefits. Bee pollen is said to have almost all nutrients that are essential to the human body.

Bee pollen is said to contain, fatty acids, minerals, lipids, proteins, folic acids, bioflavonoids, enzymes, and carotenoids. One interesting fact about this is that bee pollen is, said to have a higher percentage of protein than beef or eggs of the same weight. Organic bee pollen can be consumed as organic bee pollen capsules or organic bee pollen powder. Some organic bee pollen benefits include protection against liver toxicity, acts as an antioxidant, has anti-inflammatory properties, improves the immune system, acts as a stress reliever, it’s a dietary supplement, lowers the risk of heart disease, and helps to prevent infections.

Another unique product that can be created from honey is honey vinegar. Honey vinegar is not common as a commercial product unless you live in Italy. It is common, however, to mix honey with apple vinegar. This mixture has been known by many as a natural healing product. Some common benefits of honey vinegar include helping in weight loss, enhancing blood circulation, improving digestion, and helping with skin rejuvenation and nourishment.

If you are looking to go into the beekeeping business, do not limit yourself to just producing honey. Expand your business by venturing into the market of other conventional bee products such as the ones mentioned above.

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No bee works alone. A single honey bee will produce one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in their lifetime. It is only with the help of a hive that the raw honey you love to eat is produced. Made into everything from flavored honey straws to honey candy, everybody loves the sweet taste of organic honey. But there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes, or rather, behind the hive. Like any work environment there is a hierarchy in the hive, and at the top is the oh so famous queen. But how much do you really know about this queen bee? She is much more complex than what meets the eye, and if you are at are looking to learn beekeeping basics, here are five must-know facts about the queen bee.

1. The queen will only ever eat organic royal jelly

Organic royal jelly is the diet of all young bees, but the queen gets to keep this diet throughout her life. Produced from the head of young worker bees, organic royal jelly allows the queen to be the only bee who can reproduce in a hive as all the workers who eat fermented pollen have their ovaries shrivel over time.

2. There can only be one

You have probably heard that there can only be one queen in every hive, but it doesn’t start that way. Multiple queens are produced, and they fight until only one remains. After a queen hatches, she kills all of her competing queens by stinging their unhatched eggs. If more than one queen hatches at once, they will fight until only one remains.

3. Queen bees are not all about the honey

The queen may never leave the hive during her ‘reign’. She will never produce any honey in her lifetime, the queen doesn’t even visit a flower. In fact, she will rarely ever eat honey because she lives off organic royal jelly.

4. The queen bee is more of a figurehead than the ruler of the hive

Think of a beehive more like a democratic system, not a monocratic system. The queen bee is there to be the mother but doesn’t really make any decisions. There aren’t too many decisions to be made in a hive, but when it comes time to choose something like a nesting site, all the bees get a vote.

5. The queen bee only ever mates for a period of one to two days

It might surprise you that all worker bees are female, for every 100 worker bees there is one drone bee, a male bee. They don’t contribute any bee pollen, instead, their purpose is to mate with the queen. Once in her life, for just a couple days at the most, the queen bee will mate as much as possible with as many drone bees as possible. After that, she never mates again but the sperm is stored inside of her so she can reproduce over an extended amount of time. Once she runs out of sperm, the queen can never mate again.

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