The splendor of creation: Watch Israel's bees in action

Shay Spector can talk about bees from morning to night, from January to December, from the scarred south of Israel to the dangerous borders of the north of our country.

Considering that his morning starts at half past four, that the bees don't work in a certain season, and that the only thing that limits him in the field - and that barely - is the instructions of the home command, you finally come out with a dense and compressed conversation, mostly optimistic and partly pessimistic, amazing in its knowledge and fascinating in its software.

Add to these words the amazing photos of Reuven Castro, and a relatively cheerful, blue-and-white chorus of a new year and a new page is already playing in the head almost automatically. honey.

Spector Hedvoren provides pollination services from Zalim to Kibbutz al-Rum in the northern Golan Heights, and produces honey himself in his wonderful shop at the base of Ham in Kfar Ruth, where there are at least a dozen types of honey, distinguished by taste and variety, regions and blooms. 

"We start our day very early. A little after five in the morning I'm at the hive, and the guys arrive around six and organize a quick exit to beat the traffic jams and congestion," he explained, "The work is throughout the year and without a specific season. We've already learned well that it's not for everyone".

He describes the amazing process that underpins the powder and bottom line eats on the plate in dramatic and epic terms. The years taught him, and taught us, that these words are not too big, and certainly not too important.

The echoes of war did not stop him. "We work a lot in the north and south, and we decided in principle not to leave farmers alone. If you don't put bees in their orchards, a large part of the crop goes down the drain. We didn't agree, so we went in as far as they allowed us."

He talks about north and south, but sees with his own eyes - 42 years of bees, after all - how the area of the country is small. "The bees need a relatively large living space, and they traditionally deal with urbanization and the displacement of the areas, with the tremendous greed for the land and the erasure of nature. There is no thinking here. We were told that they would bring cheap tomatoes from Turkey, and you see how much tomatoes cost now. Bees cannot be imported from abroad, And in the end there will be a real food problem here."

The talk about "the state" collides with the talk about the bees themselves. He can't say anything bad about them, and certainly not that they don't have thinking. "People tend to confuse them with wasps. A bee only stings because she thinks they want to take her honey," he said, "and working with them is very professional and surgical. You can make it difficult for her and it will harm development and crops, but a bee knows how to fix everything. A good beekeeper simply knows Not to disturb them, but to help them."

This experience taught him that this is not an industry for the young. "It's very hard and very physical work, from the beginning of the heat to the end of the soul. There are no bees in Zoom, but their breeding is something that draws you in. It's interesting and intriguing and instructive. When you're inside, in it, you realize that bees are something amazing, the splendor of creation."