A quick search suggests that the average American uses about 1.3 pounds of honey per year. If I’m 40 years old, and guess that I might live to be 80, that’s only 52 pounds of honey, which I could easily buy in bulk. Honey doesn’t expire, and even assuming the price doesn’t skyrocket from bee die-offs, inflation alone will make the price go up over time.
Does it make sense to buy all the rest of the honey I’ll ever need for the rest of my life, right now?
A fire could destroy it, just saying 👀
That’s some very nice honey you got there, be a shame if it all burned down
“I bought a lot of pudding”
I tried to get a gif of Adam Sandler saying that in Punch Drunk Love but I couldn’t find the exact scene I wanted so you get this explanation insteadThe bee die-offs, that one typically hears about, has nothing to do with honey bees. Honey bees don’t show any signs of going extinct. Its may of the other bee species, which are dying off. And that is bad because of the species liking different specific plants, which often rely on this bee species to be pollinated.
Some of this is because domesticated bees are filling the roles wild bees take. Some is temperature based, like bees just die at something like 55 or 60 degrees C. Hooray climate collapse!
Yeah - a lot of “save the bees” narratives omit the fact that honey bees are not indigenous to the US and displaced some species.
We should be just as concerned for wasps, who are essential to pollination.
i was with you until you got to the murder flies.
Baeus are absolutely adorable though, how could anyone hate a chubby wingless wasp?
Cookoo wasps are gorgeous.
Many solitary wasp species incapacitate and lay eggs in spiders - the spider bodies make tasty snacks for the babies. If you don’t like spiders - the enemy of your enemy?
It’s really only the social wasps that are aggressive though - which makes sense. They will sting and defend their hive with their lives, because that’s where their sisters and nieces live! But all wasp species are essential. We need paper wasps for pollination - even if a Polistes sting will ruin your day.
The latter wasp reminds me of what I was told is the “Jade beetle,” but which is apparently a “figeater beetle.”
If you like the green/iridescent, sweat bees are beautiful.
Common names for insects are very regional honestly. Ie, in my locale, we call “crane flies” “skeeter eaters.”
Or how “June bug”/“June beetle” covers hundreds of species.
Once Honey 2.0 comes out in 20 years, your stock in Honey 1.0 will be worthless :(
Just crush up Viagra in it and sell it as sex honey.
A quick search suggests that the average American uses about 1.3 pounds of honey per year.
I think this is a case of people not eating honey and bringing the average way down.
My current SO puts honey in her tea and goes though about a pound and a half per month or about 18lbs per year.
It might sound like a lot but 24oz over an average of 30 days is less than an Oz of honey per day or 2 tablespoons across 4 cups of tea every day.The average added sugar consumption for American adults is about 70g per day, which works out to be 25.6 kg (56.2 lbs) per year. People can shift their source of sweetener and consume a dramatically higher amount of honey without necessarily having a diet that is all that different from the national average.
Thank you, I’m one of these people, as are most of the folks I know. I’ll eat maybe a couple of teaspoons of honey per year, tops. And I cook 3 meals a day at home, from scratch, every day.
Honey is great, I love bees, but I don’t actually eat much honey.
I’ll balance her out - zero most years. It doesn’t taste good enough to start adding sweetener to things
Sure, buy the 50 lbs of honey now. Convert it to mead. Profit.
asdf
Carry it around? You just find a tree. Nice hollow tree and hide it in there. Everyone knows it’s how you store honey.
I buy a 5 gallon bucket of honey once every 6ish years. It’s one of the only sweeteners my wife can have so we use it in everything that needs a sweeter taste. I fill small 20oz jars with it and seal the bucket back up. It’s a good investment because you can get it much much cheaper. I buy mine from Sleeping bear farms in Michigan.
Is it dangerous? What if the bears wake up?
They hibernate for quite a while. Plenty of time to steal their honey jars.
Hello.
Oh wait you meant the other kind of bear…
obviously you have to wait for them to go lookin’ for pic-a-nik baskets then.
It’s probably better to buy it along the way.
Yes inflation will make honey more expensive over the coming 50 years or so. But it will make everything else more expensive too.
I’ll keep my money on a savings account instead.
Yeah, then turn it into mead
Then you’d be a lot warmer and a lot happier!
Beekeeper here. I won’t comment on whether or not you should. But since I know a little about storing honey, here are some things to consider:
If you do this, you need to make sure it’s sealed in airtight containers.
Part of what gives honey its antimicrobial properties (and long shelf life) is its low moisture content. But it’s hygroscopic and will pull moisture directly from the air if exposed. After it pulls enough moisture, it can ferment, grow bacteria, or otherwise not be fit for normal consumption.
Also, honey can crystallize over time. This doesn’t mean it’s bad, but in order to re-liquify it, you’ll need to heat it. So consider your storage container size and material carefully.
That said, 52 lbs is less than a 5 gallon bucket full (at roughly 12 lbs / gallon), so it shouldn’t take an incredible amount of space if you choose to do it. Or, in smaller portions, a quart mason jar will hold about 3 lbs. So 2 cases (12 jars each) would exceed your quantity requirements, and be more manageable than a 60lb bucket.
Also if you can buy it in bulk at wholesale prices, it will be cheaper. Retail can be anywhere from $5-$20 per pound (depending on what/where) whereas the last I checked, wholesale prices were more like $1.50 - $3.50 per pound, depending on quantity.
Hope that helps.
Hello! I have considered getting into bee keeping as a retirement thing but I don’t know a good resource to start learning.
Are there any good online communities you can recommend, forums, etc?
When I was first starting out, I spent a lot of time at the BeeSource forums. I haven’t been there in a while, so I don’t know how it currently is, but I found it a good resource initially. FWIW, I always found the beekeeping-related subreddits to be pretty hit and miss.
There are tons of books available, possibly from your local library, but some are better than others. Wicwas press has a lot of good books, but I think they skew more towards advanced beginner and later, rather than the basic beginner.
But most importantly, there’s a saying that “all beekeeping is local”. While the basics are generally the same everywhere, the specifics vary depending on location. Not only things like temperature, humidity, and rainfall, but also what kinds of plants bloom, when and how often.
So regardless of any reading or other research you do, one of the best things you can do to learn is join a local beekeeping club. There will surely be members that have been there for a while, and you can learn from them what really works in your area.
Also, if you’re in the US, check with your local Ag Extension office. They may have resources or info to help you get started. Possibly even classes.
Thank you so much!
I hadn’t really considered how much of the knowledge is local. That makes sense though, in a duh why didn’t I already think of that kind of way.
I’m not ready to get started yet but I like reading about potential future hobbies or things I just find generally interesting, such as bee keeping, so the general knowledge will be fine for now.
i would not consider buying this much honey, personally, but i really appreciate your comment. it is so informative.
thank you! (sincere)
Where do you recommend wholesale purchases from?
I’d start with local apiaries and/or small/mid scale beekeepers.
The trick will be finding one that will let you buy a smaller quantity (relatively speaking - you probably don’t want multiple 55 gallon drums of honey) at near-wholesale prices.
This might be tough, because small scale (hobbyist or side-gig) beekeepers often charge a premium because they’re not producing a lot, and value the hard work they put into what they did get.
On the flip side, larger outfits will likely already have contracts with a reseller, and may not want to bother with selling a mere 50-100 lbs as a one-off.
A good place to ask around might be a local beekeeping club/meetup. It would at least let you meet some of your local beeks, and maybe determine which are retail-only and which do wholesale.
Does anyone else REALLY want this crazy honey buyer to get his honey from this knowledgeable beekeeper? It’s a Lemmy matchmaking story!
Unfortunately, I’ve really scaled back my number of hives and now only get enough honey to keep my immediate family supplied.
But I appreciate the sentiment.
But surely you know another beekeeper who is on Lemmy? There must be 1s of you!
You da MBP
most beeluable player?
He is V.I.B.
I’ll add that if you have all that honey, you might also eat more of it than you’d initially planned and run out sooner. Personally, I would start putting spoonfuls in my tea, using honey instead of jam, maybe experimenting with baking…
Lifetime supply of honey for me is one fairly small jar, except that one time I had a weird craving for honey in the comb, so I ordered a square of it and ate it like a sandwich. I guess I saw bears doing it and thought it looked tasty.
Sure you could. But I’ll offer a different perspective
All honey tastes different from different producers and areas, you’ll be missing out on some wonderful honey flavors if you buy that much in bulk. If it’s purely for sweetening, sure fine, do it. But if you want the flavor of honey, check out a farmers market and see what you’d be missing out on with bulk.
I’ve also heard that honey helps to confer resistance to allergies to things that were in the area where the honey was made. As such, OP might be missing out on environmental defense by not diversifying.
The idea did occur that I’d better be damn sure that I like whatever honey I’ll be eating for the rest of my life.
Having had a 50lb bucket of honey I can tell you that honey use goes up dramatically because you say to yourself “well I have so much I can just use it for this, and that, and a little more on my toast…” and then friends come around asking for a little here and a little there. Unless you can be super disciplined in a way that I cannot, 50 pounds will not last more that a couple years.
Do you actually eat 1.3 pounds a year tho? If so, then it does.
