Our honey farm has had the pleasure of working with honeybees for three generations. Of course, there have been some ups and downs along the way, but our bees have always reminded us to keep working hard. There’s so much you can learn from bees (besides the fact that they make amazing raw honey). So we’ve put together some of our favourite life lessons that we’ve learned on our honey farm through the years.
We hope you can take away some of these lessons to help you through the ups and downs of your daily lives too.
Lesson #1: You Can Achieve More With Teamwork
A beehive may seem like an unorganized mass of confusion, but in reality, it’s a carefully orchestrated team of workers. Every bee has a place and purpose, all working together for the success of the hive. With a common goal and great teamwork, the colony can produce over 300lbs of honey each season!
Successful colonies flourish because of the camaraderie among the bees. If they didn’t work together and only took care of themselves, the swarm would undoubtedly perish.
Lesson #2: Be Selfless
Bees are selfless creatures. They give and give and give! When a bee finds a beautiful patch of nectar-rich flowers, it doesn’t greedily hoard them all to itself. Instead, it races back to the hive and lets all the other workers know, “I just found some amazing flowers!” The bee is happy to share the newly discovered resources among its peers. This way, the entire hive benefits.
Bees also give so much back to the environment. All types of plants, including trees, flowers, and vegetables, benefit from bees visiting them. Honeybees collect and deposit pollen all over, helping plants reproduce. They are responsible for much of the food that we, and other animals on the planet, eat.
Of course, bees also give us excellent raw honey. Since they produce more than they could ever use on their own, we’re happy to bottle and share the extra honey with all of you.
Lesson #3: Communication Is Key
Bees communicate through movement and by releasing pheromones. Using their famous waggle dance, a bee can let everyone know where that new patch of blooming flowers is with pinpoint accuracy, no GPS required!
Bees also know when there is a dangerous intruder afoot. When a bee uses its stinger, it releases pheromones to alert others of the situation. Then the bees prepare themselves to help each other out.
When communication is clear, everyone benefits!
Lesson #4: Care For Your Community
Bees like a clean home.
Every winter, the honeybees stay in their hive to wait out the cold weather. The bees do not hibernate. Instead, they are just inside buzzing around, staying warm, and eating the raw honey they’ve stored. Bees will not go to the bathroom inside the hive. Doing so would put the entire colony at risk of getting sick, so bees wait until the weather warms above 2-5°C so they can head outside for a bathroom break. This break is called a cleansing flight.
As the bees stretch their wings, they remove any debris, broken wax, and fallen family members that couldn’t survive the cold months. They are just doing their job to keep their home clean. They care about the community they live in.
In the summer, bees pollinate the surrounding trees, flowers, fruits, and vegetables. They are an essential part of the ecosystem and community as a whole, leading us to one of the most important lessons that bees teach us.
Lesson #5: Consider Your Environmental Impact
Bees are closely tied to the health of our planet and the survival of all of us.
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” - Albert Einstein
All animals, both big and small, benefit from the pollination that bees provide. This reminds us to consider our environmental impact both on and off our honey farm. We use compostable packaging for our honey caramel sweets and reusable glass jars for our raw honey to lessen our environmental impact.
When we care for our planet, everyone benefits.
These are just a few of the lessons we’ve learned on our honey farm. If you have any life lessons that nature has taught you, be sure to share them with us in the comments below or on our Facebook page! We look forward to reading them.
Remember to eat green and live wild.
Bonus Lesson: Keep Dancing!
We mentioned earlier that bees use a waggle dance to communicate with each other. The orientation of the bee during the dance gives direction in relation to the sun. The duration of the dance communicates distance. This way, honeybees can tell each other with incredible accuracy where flowers are, up to 7km away from the hive.
We also think that bees enjoy dancing, and so should you!