Bees are awesome. Anyone who has tasted honey knows this.
Believe it or not, there’s a mind-blowing backstory to the honey in your cabinet.
The average bee only creates 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey over its lifetime. I sometimes use a tablespoon for a cup of tea that I drink in 5 minutes.
More than 20 million flowers have to be visited and 55,000 miles have to be traveled by a bee colony before a pound of honey is made.
via GIPHY--The speed at which I thought honey was made
And to think that I get impatient when the honey at the bottom of my container doesn’t come out right away...
Bees also enable 30 percent of the world’s crops and 90 percent of wild plants to thrive through pollination.
As if this wasn’t enough, the accolades of these careful sippers of nectar and sowers of abundance have just increased.
Scientists have discovered that bees naturally vaccinate their babies from diseases.
No waiting in line for these guys--Good to go from day 1!
But how does this work?
As worker bees fly around they pick up various pathogens that are then incidentally inserted into the “royal jelly” they make upon returning to their hive. The queen bee eats this jelly and ingests these pathogens which are stored in her “fat body,” (similar to a liver) and attach to vitellogenin, a protein that enters developing eggs.
Once the pathogen-laced vitellogenin enters an egg, that baby bee becomes immunized.
Why does this matter?
There are many environmental pathogens that bees do not get immunized against. By using the vitellogenin method (inserting select pathogens into this substance), beekeepers can protect bees from more diseases.
All egg-laying creatures have vitellogenin. This method could conceivably be used to help many other animals, which would end up increasing food security around the world.
Once again, bees embody the concept of working together for a larger cause.
If you want to unlock your inner bee, TAKE ACTION NOW by calling on members of the US congress to improve global food security.
ALTERNATE ACTION: if bees can vaccinate their children so can humanity, so tell world leaders to help immunize 300 million kids.