The £160,000 jar of honey, bees truly are priceless!

My daughter showed me this picture last night and it got me thinking, ok this is obviously generated in the States but I wondered how about here in the UK? $182,000, no way!

Google time, starting with what I know:

- one jar of honey equals 250grams

- one bee makes a teaspoon of honey in it's life

- a bee lives on average 40 days in the summer, during that time they work every waking hour on varies duties from the day they are born;

• 1-2 days - Cleans cells and keeps the brood warm
• 3-5 days - Feeds older larvae
• 6-11 days - Feeds youngest larvae
• 12-17 days - Produces wax, Builds comb, Carries food, Undertaker duties
• 18-21 days - Guards the hive entrance
• 22+ days - Flying from hive begins, Pollinates plants, Collects pollen, nectar and water.
• Day 40 - Their work is done...........

Now what I needed Google for:

- one 250 gram jar equals 50 teaspoons of honey, sounded about right with my experience of eating a teaspoon a day.

- the minimum wage in UK is £6.70 per hour.

But the question is just how long is a bees working day? Not wishing to be too controversial most people who are exploited on the minimum wage often do a 12 hour day. A bee works their entire life so technically that's 40 x 12 hour days for one teaspoon of honey, a grand total of 480 bee hours for one teaspoon of honey.

480 bee hours at £6.70/hour equates to £3216.00. With 50 teaspoons in a 250 gram jar that's £160,800.00 per jar!

It was a great year for my bees, one hive produced 80 jars of honey, WOW an amazing £12.86M in bee hours.

BEES TRULY ARE PRICELESS!!!

  

 Ok I've been a bit lazy on the bee blog front, just as well my ladies haven't been as lazy.

Has been an eventful month, first I get back from a few days away to find this ball of bees waiting for me in the garden, I had suspected the previous week that Queenie was going to do a runner, but thought I had more time. Not too much harm done, collected swarm and dumped them into an empty hive I had. The first ever swarm I had collected, felt quite proud.

 Then a couple of weeks later on a Saturday morning I dropped a promised cucumber plant around to my neighbour, to be greeted with "What's that a peace offering?"

"Why what's wrong?", I say

"Your bees are in my garden again!"

Swarm number two, now I was in a hurry, so this wasn't a text book collection, it was raining too, I just swept them into a plastic box and snapped the lid on hoping I had the queen! The next problem was that I didn't have the right sort of starter hive to put them in, so just used an old travel box.

They are now in a neat little polystyrene starter hive that Thorne's, http://www.thorne.co.uk/  rushed out to me.

Just checked all three colonies today, all seemed to be doing ok, despite my best endeavours with the poly box when I managed to drop a load of bees on the ground! Don't think I dropped the queen! Time will tell.

All three Queens were laying, can my garden really support 150,000 bees? I think not, a new home/location required.

There is an old bee keepers saying, "A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon and a swarm in July isn't worth a fly", so I have two bales of hay, but fingers crossed will be a good year for honey :)

Promise I won't be as lazy with next post!

Could this be first sighting of an Asian Hornet in the UK, a friend in Warlingham Surrey just caught it in his garage. I really hope not, bees have enough stacked up against them at the moment! 

Just put a call out to the bee inspector