A joke in beekeeping circles is, “Ask four beekeepers a question, and you will get five answers.”

I find beekeepers a congenial lot, but it’s true they hold conflicting opinions on many subjects. Like, how best to house bees, mite control—natural or chemical? —and frequent hive inspections vs. leave-bees-the-heck-alone. It is not surprising that the bee community, which includes bee researchers, disagrees about whether using honey in cooking and baking has health benefits.  

I don’t think anyone disputes that dishes and baked goods made with honey taste better. Custards made with sugar taste fine; custards made with honey taste glorious. Same for granola, and vegetable and meat glazes made with honey.

Many frontier recipes call for honey. Our great-grandmothers cooked with it because rural people kept bees.

When sugar was cheap, natural food advocates wanted to give people a reason to use expensive honey in cooking. Honey had antibacterial properties and antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Beekeeping sites and honey producers run food recipes that call for honey, along with recipes for honey-based beauty products like facial scrubs, and health remedies like wound ointments. But many people believe that the good properties in honey don’t survive heating.    

Practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient health system still honored in India, claim that heating and cooking honey changes its natural composition. This, they believe, allows for toxic molecules to stick to mucous membranes of the digestive system, which can convert to a toxin called Ama, which leads to upset stomach, affects respiration, insulin sensitivity, skin diseases, and weight gain. For those who do not buy that, Ayurvedic proponents still advise—don’t heat honey, because it wastes honey’s health benefits. Don’t even put it in hot liquids. What? Morning tea without honey?

But what about the university research that validated the old-time remedy of honey in hot liquids? They found it beneficial for coughs and sore throats.  

It gets confusing. An article circulated by extension services laid down guidelines for heat and honey. Honey should not be heated rapidly over direct heat. The hotter the heat, the more potential for reducing nutritional value.

Honey begins to lose its healthful properties at 113F, and worsens at 122 F. It doesn’t say how long it takes for that damage to occur. One site recommends letting tea or coffee cool to a drinkable temperature before adding the honey.

As with most arguments, we can find evidence to support the theory we like best. Some articles say heat destroys the beneficial elements in honey, some say honey has a multitude of healthful components, some of which survive cooking. Some people point out that honey, even cooked, has a lower glycemic index and is better for people with diabetes and hypoglycemia. Some concede that honey loses some of its bioenzymes with cooking, but still imparts a nice aroma and flavor to baked goods.    

We may wish to consider the Placebo Effect and the Happiness Factor, too. When we believe a substance or pill helps our body, it does, even if the pill is worthless. Machines and tests have measured that in labs. And when we enjoy something, it triggers all sorts of health benefits, also verifiable in the lab. A recent study proclaimed ½ cup of ice cream per day as a surefire way to bolster health.

Take that, naysayers!  

Movies and TV shows sometimes set romantic scenes on rooftops.

Elegant food appears on a table laid with a linen cloth and fancy crystal. Lovely music plays on a speaker. After dining, the lovers nestle at the roof’s edge and gaze down on blinking lights.  

A rural person like me may think, “What is romantic about noise, crowding, and light pollution that obliterates the stars?” But it is all about what you’re accustomed to. These days, bees who formerly lived in meadows, trees, and yards are getting used to living on rooftops.  

Beekeepers in urban places have started to locate hives on top of buildings. Some studies report urban bees can be stronger and healthier than suburban and rural bees. It relates to diet. A variety of blooms makes bees healthier, and sometimes cities and towns offer a greater variety of flowers. In the suburbs and rural places, bees may harvest only one or a few kinds of blooms.  

In many places, towns and cities that had rules against beekeeping have changed their minds.  The local food movement helped jettison laws and codes that prohibited bees. Urban gardeners applaud the change; urban shopkeepers like to stock local honey.

Urban children who have bees living atop their building are brought closer to nature. They have the opportunity to observe bees coming and going, and they also learn to be careful around them.  

In response to the decline of bee numbers, the General Services Administration adopted the Pollinator Initiative that encourages federal facilities to locate bee hives on their roofs. Bee raisers contract with the government to locate hives atop courthouses and other federal buildings. One such facility is the Warren B. Rudman courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire.

The hives serve a research role, too. Program directors collect data on subjects like what plants are most beneficial to bees, and whether bees on rooftops benefit the flora of the entire area. The program hopes that if bees thrive, lessons learned can be passed along to other facilities, private and governmental.   

 A roof top must offer the bees a close source of water, so bees don’t have to expend a lot of energy travelling. And the roof should offer optimum temperatures in summer and winter.

But when too many hives live in an area with limited green spaces and flowers, bee health will suffer. This has been observed in London and New York City.

Urban settings can also be incubators for disease. Urban beekeepers must treat their hives for disease more often than rural beekeepers do, which is costly. And honeybees may pick up contaminants from city environments, which will appear in the honey. Beekeepers have found that sometimes honey produced by their bees was made from artificial sugars gathered from the urban environment.

Despite those hazards, rooftop beekeeping may help reverse the decline of bees. One bonus of the federal program has already come to pass. When bees produce more honey than they need, the excess goes to local food banks.

 Like most humans, bees labor in the daytime and slumber at night. Like us, they sleep for five to eight hours, and don’t function well if they miss those hours. Like us, they go through different stages of sleep—lighter to deeper. When they awaken, they take a while to get moving—no coffee available. They may stay immobile for a while, or quietly groom themselves or others.

Bees who don’t live in colonies, particularly males, often sleep on flowers. They grab hold of the flower with either their legs or mandibles. If the flower closes, that is all to the good, offering the bee protection from predators. Female solitary bees are likely to make nests. In the daytime, they visit flowers in search of nectar and pollen. The male bees take only quick sips of nectar, and devote their time to searching for a female to mate with, or driving off other males.

Honey bees sleep in their hives or nests. The foragers, who are older bees, generally sleep outside of cells, near the edge of the nest where it is cooler, and away from uncapped brood. Young worker bees usually sleep inside cells, near the center of the nest. They may not sleep consecutive hours, but waken and work at their jobs, sleep for a while, and then return to work.   

When bees lose sleep, they become less competent at their jobs. Researchers showed that sleep-deprived bees could not properly perform the waggle dance that tells their sisters where the blooms are. Foragers had trouble navigating a new route home, and showed signs of sleepiness, like, they moved their antennae less.

What disrupts bees and their sleep? Bears, raccoons, skunks, and mice raid at night and alarm the hive. Light and noise from humans can put a colony on edge.  

But troubling studies have shown that neonics, chemicals used in pesticides, upset the sleep cycle of bees and flies. One study of bumble bees found that when bees received a dose of neonics, in the amount they would encounter in normal life, it disturbed their usual sleep pattern. The bees slept more in the daytime, and tried to forage at night when flowers were unavailable.

If you come across a bee flitting about, not overly interested in flowers, it may be a solitary male searching for a female, or others males to chase off. Or it could be a normally ambitious forager, wandering about because she is short on sleep.

The World Wildlife Federation tells us that 90 percent of wild plants and 75 percent of the leading global crops depend on pollination. The pollinators have an enormous job. They need their rest.

“Why are your hives painted different colors?” my neighbor asked.

I told her someone theorized that if hives are different colors, it helps the bees find their way home. That was all the excuse some of us needed to pretty up our bee houses.

When I asked the young clerk at the Lowe’s paint desk for lavender outdoor paint, he protested. “No. Lavender isn’t an outdoor color.” Even after I explained it was for a bee house, he frowned while mixing it. It went against his grain.

Some beekeepers go beyond simple painting—they add flowers, designs, and stripes to the hives, and the bee yard becomes almost as attractive as nearby flower plots.  

Painting hives in assorted pastel colors is not practical for commercial bee keepers, and big producers also have less choice in what kind of structure to house their bees. Commercial outfits use the Langstroth hive, the box-like hive people see from their car windows, sitting side-by-side in fields or on hillsides. This is the most popular hive for backyard beekeepers, too, and has proven itself over time.

Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth, a Presbyterian minister, invented the Langstroth hive in l851. In one version of the story, he wanted to build a hive that allowed people to harvest honey without driving the bees out with fire. The more common version says the reverend discovered “bee space,” the distance between combs that bees prefer, and he designed his hive accordingly.  

Langstroth hives come with premade frames that hang side-by-side. Bees can go right to work filling combs with brood and honey.

Some backyard beekeepers like top bar hives. The beekeeper merely places bars at the top of the hive, and bees build the combs themselves. This takes longer, though some energetic hives can produce a triangular-shaped comb very quickly. But in northern climates, every warm day counts, and top bar hives don’t produce as much honey as Langstroths do.

Today, many honey producers supplement their incomes by sending their bees to the California almond groves to pollinate them. The Langstroth hive is portable, and its square shape means many fit on a semi-trailer. Top bar hives are stationary.     

Fans of top bar hives, and the similar Warre and Kenyan hives, like that their bees put brood and honey on comb freshly made by the bees, rather than on plastic frames that may contain a variety of chemicals. No expensive extracting equipment is needed. The beekeeper simply removes a single comb at a time and puts it in a squeezer made of two triangular-shaped pieces of wood, suspended over a large bowl. Every day, the beekeeper tightens clamps, until all the honey is squeezed out. The wax can be rendered for candles and other uses.

Top bar advocates believe the top bar design promotes good air circulation, making condensation, which can be a problem, less likely. Langstroth fans point out that their hives can expand—they merely add a box atop their full one. Top bar hives run out of room.

For all our preferences and debates about the best way to raise bees, we see that bees settle nicely into cavities of trees and under edges of objects to hide from predators. It appears they have less disease in the wild.

Bees get along nicely without us. But we can’t do without them.  

Most folks designate The Dog as humankind’s best friend. Stories abound that tell of dog loyalty, usefulness, bravery, and intelligence. Dogs pull sleds in the North, guide the blind, guard perimeters, detect seizures in humans before they happen, help children learn to read, and lick the hands of hospice patients. The least clever dog, who hasn’t a smidgen of agility, can change the course of a child’s life just by loving her.

Cats rank second in popularity in the U.S., but they give dogs a run for their money by starring in legions of YouTube videos. Cats rid barns and basements of rodents, purr against our necks, and remind us to put away our clean laundry.

Horses have their partisans. The Percheron crowd brag that their breed built young America. Horses have fulfilled all kinds of roles dating back to ancient times. Artists, photographers, and videographers never tire of trying to capture their beauty.

Oxen, sheep, cattle, hogs, poultry, and fish supply us with food. Yaks, water buffalo, camels, and elephants play vital roles in various cultures. Reptiles and amphibians also impact human communities. Birds enchant us when they sing, and inspire us when they soar.

Because she is small, and a bug, the bee does not come to mind when we think about close, nonhuman allies. But we cannot do without her.  Bees pollinate our key food crops, from delicious fruits to healthful vegetables and nuts. Even dairy producers depend on bees, because cows eat nourishing alfalfa.  

Bees share honey with us. While tasting great, honey also has antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. Studies continually find more ways that honey helps combat illnesses and ailments.

We enjoy the variety, beauty, and fragrance of flowers and trees that bees pollinate.   

 I am not suggesting we knock dogs off their pedestals as humankind’s Best Friend. But when we list True Friends, bees ought to be in the Top Five.  

Most of us want to do right by our friends. And bees are dying in droves.

Two things nearly anyone can do for bees: 

1. Find online the NRDC petition that asks the EPA to ban neonics, a family of harmful chemicals that wreak havoc on bees. Some of these chemicals are 5 to 10 thousand times more toxic to bees that DDT was, and they pose a threat to us, also. The EU and other countries have banned them. Or, find a petition against Bayer, their producer, or send Bayer a letter.  

2. Nourish bees. Even if you have just a window box, plant flowers that bees love.  

The future that belongs to young people will need a healthy bee population for pollinating crops.  Some youth understand that. Here are three of them.

California teen Rory Hu won a science competition for her research with honeybees. The girl became concerned about bee health after reading of the serious decline in their numbers. 

Hu learned that pesticides can harm memory in bees, making them unable to find flowers, or find their way home after harvesting nectar. Hu burrowed bees from a beekeeper to run an experiment. She feared the bees at first, but later decided they are “really cute.”

Hu wanted to find out if polyphenols, a plant compound found in tea, and caffeine, a stimulant, could help bees learn. If so, they might be used to help bees regain their foraging abilities. She won $10,000 when she demonstrated they could.

A high school girl in Connecticut put forth a solution to the varroa mite problem that plagues bee colonies. Raina Jain was in high school a few years ago when she became aware of the bee crisis and started visiting beekeepers.

Varroa mites attach themselves to honeybees, feed on them, and weaken them. Bees, also contending with the adverse effects of pesticides and monoculture (planting large areas of one crop, while bees need a variety of nourishing blooms) don’t have the vigor to fight off varroa infestations.

Jain said, “I’ve been brought up with the principle of ‘live, and let live,’ to value every life, no matter how small,” Jain said. “You hear all these things on the news, but you don’t realize how important bees are until you see them firsthand. I kept hearing that bees are in danger, and the population is decreasing, but I didn’t really understand what that meant until I saw a bee farm and saw hundreds of empty and absconded hives and piles of dead bees.”

Jain wanted to design a narrow entryway that would stop the mites. She applied thymol, a naturally occurring pesticide, to the entryway. A forager bee makes 40 trips to the hive in a day, and at each departure and return, the bee had contact with thymol, which is destructive to mites, but did no harm to the bees. The small amount of pesticide did not contaminate the wax, honey, or pollen, either.

In one lab experiment, the treated-entry method caused a 70 percent reduction in mites in three weeks, with no harm to bees.

Covid interrupted further research for a while, but Jain, now a college student, has patented her entryway.

Recently, CBS Sunday morning ran the story of Maine 11-year-old Elizabeth Downs, who started keeping bees at age six and who now acts as an ambassador for them. Her local bee club, made up of adult members, named her the youth outreach person. She gives presentations at school, explaining to her peers how important bees are for the well-being of people.  

A neighbor with a large garden started Elizabeth’s education. Another neighbor, a beekeeper, saw her intense interest in bees and gave her a hive of her own and outfitted her in a way-too-big bee suit.            

 Elizabeth wanted to learn all she could, and at age 8 she enrolled in a university, online beekeeping course. 

When she is working with bees, Elizabeth feels calm.  “I love the sound of their buzz.” She aspires to one day be the state apiarist.  

I pointed to the honey bowl on the table and told my guests, “For your toast.”

“No thanks,” said one. “I don’t eat bug barf.”

It wasn’t the first time I had heard golden, delicious honey described that way. But it suggests a misunderstanding of how bees make this wonderful food.

We connect barfing with sick or sour stomachs, discomfort, and illness. Honey-making involves stomachs, but has nothing in common with vomit.

The process starts when the worker bee lands on a flower. She pokes her long tongue into the bloom’s nectar to suck it up. The sticky liquid goes into her honey stomach, separate from her other stomach. (On a high-temperature day, I yearn for a second stomach, or maybe even more, like a cow. I would fill extra bellies with ice cream.)

While the worker collects nectar, pollen from the flower adheres to her hairy body. She has pollen baskets on her rear legs. The bees will combine protein-rich pollen with honey to feed to their young.

Even as this worker collects more nectar, (she visits 50-200 flowers in one trip) enzymes in her honey stomach begin working on the liquid to break up the sugars.

The forager bee returns to the hive carrying her weight in nectar and pollen. At the hive, a householder bee greets her to relieve her of the nectar load. The forager burps up the contents of her honey stomach into the mouth of the other bee. That bee adds its own enzymes to the liquid to make it stickier, then shares that with yet another bee, who adds more enzymes. The honey, like the plot, thickens. About ten bees involve themselves in adding enzymes to the nectar the forager brought home.

Meanwhile, the forager has gone off to collect more nectar, and will work as long as the light lasts.

The bees deposit the honey in octagonal cells, but its water content is still too high. Other bees get busy fanning the cells with their wings to dry out the liquid. It takes about five days for the honey to ripen. At that point, another crew puts a coating of wax atop the cells to keep the honey clean and protect it for winter consumption and for feeding the young.

Once a person understands the work and effort that goes into making honey, it is impossible to let even a drop of it go to waste at the bottom of a jar.

And it becomes harder to think of the transfer of nectar as anything close to barfing. Seems to me, a mouth-to-mouth transfer of sweetness more closely resembles kissing.    

A well-dressed gentleman lifts a tiny, crystal glass from a lace-covered table. Several goblets sit side by side, holding amber goo. The man picks up a doll-size silver spoon, dips it into the goblet, and smears the spoon’s contents onto his lips. His tongue runs around his mouth. He sighs.

“Robust, though delicate. Retains a memory of August berries and morning dew.” He sets the goblet down, gulps water from a regular glass, and moves to the next one.   

A woman in elegant silk similarly raises a goblet and dunks a spoon into it. She places the goo on her tongue and clamps her mouth shut. “Hmm,” she says. “Somber, yet hints at gaiety.  A warbler’s song lingers in the back of the throat.”

I don’t know whether formal honey tastings occur. But when food, taste, and flavor enter the picture, snobbery often follows. Wine, tea, coffee, and chocolate have fierce enthusiasts who champion favorites. Even milk, our first and most basic food, attracts zealous fans. Full or reduced fat? Pasteurized or raw? Can products derived from oat, coconut, almond and soy claim to be milk? Are yak, camel, and goat milk more healthful? Be sure to check around for purists before bringing up the subject of milk.        

I have been to two honey tastings—both connected to beekeeping classes. Paper pill cups held the honey, and we dipped toothpicks in them. It was fun and enlightening.

A thick, black variety that looked like molasses surprised me. The placard said Buckwheat. Tiny buckwheat flowers require the bees to work hard. Flowers often come in dark colors, but buckwheat honey can be reddish or amber, too. It isn’t as sweet as most other honey, but its strong flavor makes it great for baking. Buckwheat honey advocates say it may be better for you and help keep blood sugar levels down in diabetics.

Manuka honey has attracted a following. Native to New Zealand, this honey comes from the Manuka bush and contains methylglyoxal, which may strengthen its antibacterial properties.  Fans say its health benefits have been proven in studies. Those include improvement in digestive health, soothing coughs, ulcers, acne, and gingivitis, and even mitigating some symptoms of cystic fibrosis. Generally, this honey costs more.  

More than 300 varieties of honey have been identified. Clover may be the most popular kind. Harvested in New Zealand, Canada, and North America, clover honey tastes sweet and light, and works well in recipes.  

 Elvish honey, the most cherished in the world, comes from a cave in northern Turkey and has been called the true nectar of the gods. Elvish honey costs $6,800 for a gram.

Here are a few of the others:

Dandelion honey, a strong honey, has a dandelion aroma and is considered medicinal in China, Tibet, and India.  

Mesquite honey, from the southwestern United States, has a smoky aroma.

Lavender honey has a woody and floral taste.

Fireweed honey, a premium honey, comes from Western Canada and the Northwestern U.S.

Orange blossom, from a combination of citrus fruits, has a fresh, fruity taste, and is made and consumed in many countries. In the U.S., Florida, California, and Texas produce it.

Alfalfa honey, mostly produced in the United States and Canada, has a mild, sweet taste and combines nicely with beverages like tea and lemonade.   

Eucalyptus honey is valued across the world for protection against colds and headaches. It can vary in taste, but has an herbal flavor and slight aftertaste of menthol.

With so many and varied kinds of honey, the opportunity for honey tasting events seems endless. Along with the prospect of pretentious metaphors.  

Imagine that you are a soldier, wounded during the American Civil War. The medic treating you served only a brief apprenticeship, and few medicines are available to put on your wound. Carbolic or nitric acids. Turpentine. Whiskey could be poured on your injury, but you would rather it go down your throat to dull your pain.

To your relief, the regiment has run out of bromine. The other remedies sting horribly, but bromine is excruciating.

Anesthetics are rationed, so you brace yourself for a painful treatment. Instead, the medic smooths warm honey on your wound. The antibacterial properties of honey are not yet understood, but the medic has had good success applying it.  

That was then. Today, we have a myriad of patented medicines available. So why is the medical community studying whether honey has a place in wound treatment? Because the overuse of antibiotics has made germs drug-resistant.

Studies in Germany showed that a specific kind of medical-use honey helped heal wounds when other medicines had failed. Honey has been found to be effective against a strain of flesh-eating Staphylococcus. The medical-honey business now brings in millions of dollars. Honey-infused bandages and wound dressings have become readily available. (Disclaimer. Doctors remind us that burns and open wounds require prompt medical attention.)

Honey-based ointments have made their way into the world of veterinary medicine, to treat animals small and large.      

What claims do members of the natural medicine/folk-cure community make? They say honey soothes stomach aches. Nips colds in the bud. Is good for eczema, insect bites, and sunburn. Prevents acne. Soothes dry skin. Aids in foot care. Treats bed sores.

Some believe honey helps prevent tooth decay and gingivitis. A study in New Zealand involving manuka honey (raw, unpasteurized honey made from the manuka plant found in New Zealand) supported this claim.  

Cleopatra, the story goes, took milk and honey baths. Folks desiring pretty skin give themselves honey and oatmeal facials, use honey and baking soda masks, or use just honey. Commercial skin products abound that feature honey as an ingredient.   

Beekeepers insist that consuming honey has a positive health impact. They understand that medicine with a great flavor has appeal.     

I think we shouldn’t overlook the honey/happiness effect. A piece of wholesome bread, warm from the oven, slathered with butter and drowning in honey, has to bolster the health of the person eating it. I feel better just imagining it.