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What’s All the Buzz About?

from Pickerington August/September 2023

from Pickerington August/September 2023, page 26

Strong’s Stage Presence

How a few changes in habits can protect the world’s favorite pollinators

The Lithopolis Honeyfest is celebrating all things honey this September with so many exciting offerings that you’ll need to see to beelieve. And to sweeten the deal, beekeepers have already started buzzing about ways to protect the beloved honey bee.

Attendees can expect to experience two free and family-friendly days of food, beekeeper vendors, arts and crafts, live performances, and more. Competitors can join the honey bake-off or photography and honey competitions, showing off the best honey-related crafts from around Pickerington.

Beekeepers Roger and Marlene Miller – who together run Roger’s Honey – missed the first Honeyfest in 2007, but have attended every year since. Marlene says she enjoys networking with the other beekeepers and seeing familiar faces.

“You always find out different things,” Marlene says. “A lot of people come to the shows. Year after year they come back and say, ‘Oh, we come every year just to get your stuff.’”

Since joining the beekeeping business, Marlene has used her skills to create other honey-infused crafts such as jams, skin creams and soaps, which encompass only a few of the products that are featured at the Honeyfest.

“There’s like 10 or 12 beekeepers that attend, and every beekeeper has something different,” Marlene says. “All of us do different things.”

Marlene says buying local honey has several advantages over large brands you can find at the grocery store. She says ingesting local honey may help combat seasonal allergies – the pollen helps consumers build a tolerance – and it has a litany of other health benefits that are stripped away when mass-produced honey is heated to prevent granulation.

“If you heat it to a high temperature, that takes away all the good stuff in the honey like the enzymes and the vitamins and minerals. It kind of makes them null and void,” Marlene says. “So that’s why some of the stuff in the stores is nothing more than a sweetener.”

Bees are extremely important to the ecosystem because they are one of the most efficient pollinators in the world, meaning they are crucial for many plants and crops to grow. Marlene says it’s critical that we do our best to help bees, and the good news is that there are plenty of easy ways to create a more bee-friendly world – and lawn.

For example, wait to mow your lawn for as long as you can, or don’t mow in areas that don’t need it. This gives bees time to enjoy dandelions and clover.

“Our whole yard is just yellow because we don’t do anything,” Marlene says. “We don’t mow our lawn until the dandelions go to seed because that’s the first food normally in the spring that the bees will work.”

Planting native flowers, which local bees thrive on, is also a great way to support pollinators. Marlene says catmint, honeysuckle, milkweed, goldenrod and alfalfa are all excellent choices.

Marlene also warns against using pesticides unnecessarily or excessively, as they can combine with the pollen and nectar bees bring back inside the hive and kill them.

Recipe

Zucchini Honey Bread

Two loaves

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 tbsp. ground cinnamon

1 cup nuts, ground

2 large zucchinis (enough for two cups, shredded)

2 eggs

1 ½ cups honey

1 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl and stir in the nuts.

• Peel the zucchini and shred enough for two cups before combining with the remaining ingredients in another bowl. Add to the flour mixture and stir until everything is moistened.

• Spoon the batter into two greased and floured 9-by-5by-3-inch loaf pans and bake for one hour.

While Roger and Marlene are both retired, the two of them continue to run Roger’s Honey to stay active and to keep doing what they enjoy.

“It gives us a sense of purpose. To meet people and, you know, they want us to share what we know about beekeeping – it’s a good thing for everybody. That’s why we do it,” Roger says.

Pick up honey products from Roger’s Honey – and other local beekeepers – at the Lithopolis Honeyfest on Sept. 8-9 along Columbus Street in the Lithopolis Village Center.