SCHMIDT APIARIES

A lot of people consider the yellow pollen that coats their cars in the spring a major nuisance.

To Frank Schmidt, it's just about the sweetest sight in the world. It's a sign that his bees will stop loafing around in their hives and start punching their time cards. Pollen means nectar and nectar means  honey, that luscious yellow gold that keeps Schmidt in the beekeeping business.

Schmidt manages 600 hives in various locations throughout El Paso County. Each hive is home to between 60,000 and 70,000 working bees. Schmidt Apiaries, his family-run business, produces 40,000 pounds of honey a year, much of which will be sold during the farmers' market season, which begins in June and runs through mid-October.

Consider what the bee does to make all this honey. The average hive of bees puts in 80,000 miles and gathers nectar from 2 million flowers to make a pound of honey. While the bees are buzzing around getting that nectar, they manage to gather enough pollen to pollinate 95 crops, worth an estimated $10 billion in the United States alone. In fact, about a third of the human diet is from insect-pollinated plants. Honey bees are responsible for every almond produced and 80 percent of other foods, such as blueberries, cherries, cranberries, sunflowers and apples. Bottom line: No bees? No produce; no farmers markets.

Honey is the only actual food we eat made from an insect.

"A bee's main work is to pollinate," says Schmidt, who also organizes and manages four local farmers' markets. "Honey, made from the nectar they collect, is just a delicious byproduct of their work."
Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jun 27, 2001 by Teresa J. Farney

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