The Israeli Honey Council invites the public to celebrate the importance of the honey bee to agriculture as part of the World Bee Day marked by the UN on May 20.
The honey council will celebrate the event in a five-day series of events from May 20 to 25, a press release by the Israeli Honey Council reported on Monday.
On May 20 Boaz Ben Zeev from Dvorat Hatavor will broadcast “Live from the Beehive,” a live online class on bee-keeping in which Facebook live viewers will be able to see the inside of a bee colony and ask questions. The broadcast is scheduled for 11:30 a.m., making it convenient for school children.
Bee keepers around the country will open their homes to visitors and offer them free tours and classes about the importance of the bee in maintaining agriculture, as well as offer samples of fresh honey.
Honey Council head Zeev Midan explained that bees are responsible for the pollination of 80% of the plants used by humans in agriculture.
Israelis consume roughly 4,500 tons of honey per year and enjoy over 20 types of honey, including honey made from the flowers of the avocado plant and the Biblical hyssop. As bees collect nectar from flowers, they can be made to create different types of honey if they are lead to fields containing specific flowers.
The Porat farm apiary and visitors center invites the public to visit the thousands of flying mechanical bees in the museum as well as to observe transparent beehives as the bees work.
The Mordechai Golan apiary crafted a new beer made from honey, developed after a year of intense work. The beer is fairly strong with 8% alcohol and has the benefit of appealing to those who can’t eat wheat.
“I have to make more beer now,” said Gal Golan to The Jerusalem Post, “as on Passover people bought everything.”
Golan explained that the honey he uses for the beer is the honey he and his father make from the fields the apiary is close to, without any other honey added.
A famous and often repeated idea, attributed to the famous physicist Albert Einstein, is that should bees perish, humans will only have four years to exist on this planet because without pollination, plants will not be able to survive. However Snopes, a site devoted to debunking fake news, claims there is no record of such a statement from Einstein.
May 20 was selected as the date for World Bee Day as it is the birthday of Anton Jansa, known as a painter and scholar of bees. He published Discussion on Beekeeping in 1771 and is considered a national hero in Slovenia.