Apples in honey, challah with honey, honey cakes and honey cookies plus honey in tea or in coffee instead of sugar are all part of the traditional Rosh Hashanah fare, much of which, including a cheesecake with a honey glaze, were brought to the President’s Residence on Thursday morning by a representative group of beekeepers, who met with the president’s wife Michal because President Herzog was in Tel Aviv to address the 10th annual conference of the Israel Bar Association – but managed to get back to Jerusalem in time to pose with his wife and their guests for the group photograph which is a visual record of the visit.
The beekeepers were concerned that climate change is causing bees to gradually disappear. They are in fact already an endangered species.
Bees have great significance for Israel and for Jews as pointed by Ofi Reich, the Managing Director of the Israel Honey Board who related to the biblical promise of a land flowing with milk and honey.
What he did not say is that there are 54 mentions of honey in the Bible, 15 of which specifically state a land flowing with milk and honey.
It’s a well-known fact that Israel’s milk yield is amongst the highest in the world, but it’s not necessarily known as Michal Herzog learned on Thursday, that 40% of Israel’s annual honey sales take place in the month leading to Rosh Hashanah.
But that doesn’t mean that all the honey is consumed.
Tradition influences the public insofar as buying honey and honey products goes, but then after the festival period, the jar of honey is placed somewhere in a cupboard, and is forgotten.
Over time, the honey loses its fluidity and becomes too hard, and is thrown out. Tons of honey are discarded in this manner every year, the beekeepers told their hostess, who was advised that honey is nutritious, and she should have a teaspoon of honey every day.
She was also told that bees are wonderful navigators, and can set their sights on pollinating a certain flower or fruit high in the mountain or low in the valley, and will go long distances to reach their target. One of the beekeepers told Michal Herzog that he had tracked a bee for three kilometers until it alighted on the particular flower it was seeking.
Dressed in their protective white gear, all the beekeepers were adamant that you can’t be a good beekeeper unless you love your profession and can identify different kinds of bees and know when they are sick and when they are healthy. As it is, they don’t have a very long life span.
The beekeepers, some of whom are third generation apiarists, were mainly concerned that the general public should know how much bees affect Israel’s agricultural produce, and indirectly the economy.
Michal Herzog, who is a lawyer by profession, knows how to ask questions and was genuinely interested in what the beekeepers had to say and that the fact that one second generation beekeeper couple brought their children who have already been introduced to the honey with the sting.