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Who Needs Honey When You Have Dandelions?
Leave the bees alone and switch to this easy and sustainable by-product
Bees are the tiny, annoying insects that ruin picnics and make crowds scatter right? Don’t they pollinate flowers and produce honey as a by-product?
Why can’t we just eat what they don’t need? After all, we let them do what they do and they don’t mind sharing.
This attitude created the modern beekeeping industry which has been exploiting bees throughout ages.
Honey bees — wild and domestic — perform about 80 percent of all pollination worldwide. A single bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day.
However, the statistics are showing that the bee population has seen a 60% reduction, from about 6 million hives in 1947 to 2.4 million hives in 2008.
Of course, the decrease is caused not only from commercial beekeeping but harmful pesticides, habitat destruction, climate change, and nutrition deficit.
As a vegan, I stopped eating honey three years ago without finding a good substitution. But, a couple of days ago, I came across a dandelion honey recipe and I had to try it.
The marvelous part of my discovery is that the perfect time to pick dandelions is right now!
