DEERFIELD — Humans have gained so much from such a tiny insect. Wax for candles and cosmetics, honey for food and flavoring and one of the most ancient alcoholic beverages.
It’s even estimated that one in every three bites of food is a courtesy of the honeybees and dependent on their pollinating.
For the past 15 years or so, Warm Colors Apiary in South Deerfield has hosted Honey Festival, a celebration of the honeybee.
Several hundred people filed through the annual event on Saturday, buying all things honey — from honey ice cream to honey soap — attending educational talks and getting a close look at the roughly 8 million bees on site.
“They give us so much,” said Bonita Conlon, who co-owns the 80-acre apiary with her husband, Dan Conlon. “And it’s something the scientists can’t duplicate. The honey and how much they do as far as pollinating, it’s unique. We like to celebrate them.”
Ms. Conlon has been working with honeybees for years, she and her husband holding workshops on beekeeping and bee health, selling beekeeping equipment and supplies, selling queens, honeybees and pollinating services to local farms and orchards, as well as selling their own honey and products. Nonetheless, she said she learns new things about bees that fascinate her all the time.
“I think that’s why there’s people that love it. There’s so much to learn,” she said. “They don’t hear, for example. They communicate through pheromones and vibrations.”
Mr. Conlon shared plenty of eye-opening facts as well, especially about the social structure of the honeybee. The species’ drones, which exist to mate with the queen, who lays 1,200 eggs a day, and workers, which have specialized jobs like foraging or cleaning, create a complex hierarchical society.
They even have their own language of sorts, “dancing” in different ways to communicate with one another.
“A little tidbit that I think is always fascinating is there’s different races of bees,” Mr. Conlon said, describing a study that brought two races, Italian honeybees and Carniolan honeybees, together.
The two sets of bees, he explained, could not perfectly understand each other.
“Although they both do these dances, they have different dialects,” he said. “The Carniolan bees of what was the old Yugoslavia and the Italian bees were speaking with different accents.”
Within a hive, however, bees communicate with ease. Each morning the “scouts” are sent out to search the surrounding area and bring back “samples” of pollen from different flowers.
Quite deliberately, Mr. Conlon explained, they gather from all types of flowers in order to inform other bees back at the hive what variety of food sources are available in the area. Using dances, as well as smelling like the flowers they’ve foraged from, they communicate where those food sources are with accuracy, even describing flowers a mile away.
Not only knowledge was imparted at Saturday’s Honey Festival, vendors — including Artisan Beverage Cooperative from Greenfield, Flayvors of Cook Farm from Amherst and Just Soap from Ashfield — had the opportunity to give out samples and sell some of their honey-based goods.
One such product was mead, which Artisan Beverage Cooperative was selling and had several varieties at the ready to sample.
“This is considered one of the oldest alcoholic beverages,” said Garth Shaneyfelt of Artisan Beverage Cooperative.
Indeed, the “wine with honey instead of grapes,” as the cooperative’s Soren Mason Temple describes it, was drunk throughout much of the ancient world, and is even featured in legends of Norse mythology — magic meads, as Norse sagas tell it, could be drunk to gain different powers or knowledge.
The meads the cooperative sold were also a fine example of the diversity of honey and honeybees throughout the world. The Oaxacan mead, made by the cooperative’s Green River Ambrosia, was sweeter than some of the other varieties, reflecting the tropical flowers that Mexican bees depend on for honey.
The Honey Festival — the celebration — was a success, Ms. Conlon said, and many came back for another year of appreciation for the small animals. Others walked away with a new appreciation.
Albert Einstein is often paraphrased as saying “If the bee disappeared off of the face of the earth, man would only have four years to live.” There’s some debate about whether or not Einstein ever said that. However, even if he didn’t, this is an important animal — to humans who use their honey and to plants that rely on their pollinating — and, either way, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate bees.
Reach David McLellan at dmclellan@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 268.