Getz Apiary

Why Is American Organic Honey So Rare?

USDA organic certification normally works very well with agriculture where a farmer controls the land being certified. If you grow organic tomatoes, for example, you know where your tomatoes are growing. You control what fertilizer is applied, what pesticides are used and how the crop is managed. Honeybees are considerably less cooperative. A worker bee leaves her hive and chooses where she wants to forage.

But What If Bees Aren't Flying That Far Most of the Time?

This is where the new research gets particularly interesting. Researchers tracked honeybee foraging behavior and found that the median foraging distance was approximately 750 meters, significantly shorter than the distances upon which some organic certification assumptions have been based. Bees certainly can fly several miles. That does not mean most bees do.

What Is a Swarm?

A swarm happens when a honeybee colony gets crowded and decides it is time to split. The old queen leaves with thousands of worker bees to search for a new home, while a new queen takes over the original hive. For a short time, that traveling cluster may land on a tree branch, fence post, mailbox, or some other wildly inconvenient place.

What About Ground Bees?

Ground bees are a completely different story. These are often solitary native bees that nest in small burrows in sandy or loose soil. You might notice little volcano-shaped mounds of dirt with bees darting in and out. This can look alarming, but most ground bees are incredibly docile. Many females can sting, but rarely do. Males cannot sting at all, though they may hover around trying to look intimidating.