August 20 - National Honey Bee Day

World Honey Bee Day (previously referred to as Honey Bee Awareness Day) was founded in 2009 by beekeepers within the United States to raise awareness of bee keeping and the bee industry. This is done through education and promotion, and by honouring honey bees and bee cultivation world wide. 

Honey Bee

On this day, bee lovers everywhere decorate their gardens with lavender, borage and marjoram, which are considered the bee’s knees in pollinator lures. A honey bee is naturally distinguished by the production and storage of honey, but also by the construction of perennial, colonial nests made from wax. The most well-known honey bee is the Western honey bee which has been domesticated for honey production and crop pollination.

Drones (males) are made from unfertilised eggs, thus represent solely the DNA of the queen that laid the eggs. Workers and queens (both female) result from fertilised eggs, and therefore have both a mother and a father. Worker bees join forces to seek out food and use a pattern of "dancing" (known as the bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate data relating to resources with each other. Honey bees also perform tremble dances, which recruit receiver bees to gather nectar from returning foragers.

Here at Grays we honour World Honey Bee Day by displaying some of our own beautiful honey bee related items;

Bee brooch, available from Gillian Horsup Vintage Jewellery

Hulkin + Heath silver swivel jar made in Birmingham 1920, available from Evonne Antiques 


Czech bee brooch, available from Gillian Horsup Vintage Jewellery


Honey jar, Sheffield 1912, available from Jack Podlewski

Perspex bee brooch with gold and black body and clear wings, available from Linda Bee

  
Yardley powder box with bee decoration, available from Gillian Horsup Vintage Jewellery


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