North Dallas Honey Company’s constant quest is to lead bees to nectar so they can make honey. The super-active honey bee has an especially busy—and short—life.
The average honey bee enjoys only a four-week lifespan to flit from flower to flower. The result: Only a single teaspoonful of honey to show for all that work. It’s maximum effort to produce a tiny but tasty result.
But here’s the buzz from North Dallas Honey: A typical colony of 100,000 to 150,000 honey bees yields enough teaspoons of the finest honey to fill 10 two-pound jars.
In partnership with local beekeepers, North Dallas Honey has 72 colonies in the North Texas area – more than 10 million busy bees producing raw honey.
The pollen and nectar of a North Texas purple flower called vetch is one source of “the best honey in Texas,” says Nathan Sheets, owner of North Dallas Honey Company. “Our Texas honey is gently warmed and strained through cheesecloth to remove the ‘bee knees,’ leaving the enzymes and the antioxidants of the honey. We blend a variety of honeys from honey-producing plants, including clover, vetch, wildflower and mesquite.”
A colony of bees generally contains one fertile queen bee, up to a few thousand drone bees or fertile males, and a large population of sterile female worker bees. Eggs are laid singly in a cell. Worker bees develop from fertilized eggs. Larvae are fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen.
Young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. They progress to other in-colony tasks – receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" to communicate information about resources. Honey bees also perform tremble dances to recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers.
Honey bees have been celebrated from earliest times. The ancient Greeks associated lips anointed with honey with the gift of eloquence and even the power to see the future. The priestess at the Oracle at Delphi was the "Delphic Bee."
A community of honey bees has often been employed throughout history as a model of human society. This image has been used by such famous writers as Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, Seneca, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Marx and Tolstoy.
Honey bees, signifying immortality and resurrection, were royal emblems of the Merovingian kings of Europe, a mythology that was revived by Napoleon.
All in all, a pretty sweet life for such a short-lived creature.
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North Dallas Honey has been providing local, raw and unfiltered honey since 1972. Look for the bear-shaped bottles with the orange label at your local grocer. To help alleviate allergies with an assist from nature – think organic, adults should take 1 tablespoon of honey a day and children over age 1 should take 2 teaspoons a day.
For your convenience, our honey can be found on a number of shelves at local retailers, including Albertson's, Central Market, Kroger, Market Street, Sprouts, Tom Thumb, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods. Visit www.northdallashoney.com.
About:
North Dallas Honey Company (www.northdallashoney.com) produces thick and quality honey that is packaged in 12-, 16- and 32-ounce containers. Additionally, we provide 1- and 5-gallon containers of our honey and have quarterly gift baskets filled with our honey available to order. For your convenience, our honey can be found on a number of shelves at local retailers, including Albertson's, Central Market, Kroger, Market Street, Sprouts, Tom Thumb, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods and online at www.northdallashoneycompany.com.
