Honey

[shatto]

"A honeybee makes only one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime.
It takes 60,000 bees collectively visiting more than 12 million flowers to gather enough
nectar to make one pound of honey."
From; Straight from the hive in the September 2012 Costco Connection magazine.

There. Now we know more.

[GasSavers_Erik]

It does give more perspective to the "Busy as a bee" saying.

Here are pics that I took this morning of 2 of my hives. The small jar of honey on the left was a part of my 2011 harvest, the one on the right is from what I robbed this July. Beekeeping is a rewarding and sometimes painful hobby

[trollbait]

I'm interested in beekeeping, but being in town, I think the roof is the only place for a hive where it won't get disturbed by the dogs or neighbors.

[GasSavers_Erik]

One thing is to consider how close your neighbors are and how much time they spend out in the yard. One of my hives is really mean right now. Every time I open it, they go crazy and a few even manage to sting me through the bee suit or my blue jeans or they end up getting me in the ankle. My nearest neighbor is about 600 feet from that hive and I am a little nervous because the attacking bees always follow me home (about 500 feet away) and a few will continue to harass me if I am out in the yard even 1 hour after I have closed the hive.

I have a buddy who lives in town and I am helping him start a hive (we caught a swarm and placed it in a top bar hive he built)- but his neighbors live at least 200 feet from his hive.

If you position the hive entrance so that it is facing the side of a garage or a solid fence, this forces the bees to fly up over the obstacle and keeps them above the level of most people and pets as they come and go from the hive.

[shatto]

I was told that eating local honey reduced allergy symptoms.

[GasSavers_Erik]

I have heard that as well.

There is some anecdotal support for honey helping allergy sufferers- perhaps these people are allergic to pollen from clover, fruit trees etc. (plants with showy flowers that bees visit).

It is my understanding that most people are allergic to wind pollinated plants like ragweed and certain grasses- bees don't visit these plants so there would be very little of these types of pollen in honey.

Here is the abstract for a published study on this topic- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11868925

In any case, it can't hurt anything to give it a try. If I was an allergy sufferer, I wouldn't mind real improvement in my symptoms OR even the benefits of the placebo effect- either would bring relief