The honeybee: the ultimate pollinator and creator of the most natural sweetener with the best health benefits.

Last year, a local beekeeper, Beverly Keen, contacted me about photographing her bees and the honey harvest. While our schedules didn't match up last summer, we were able to get together this year. Mrs. Beverly was my husband's 7th grade science teacher and he LOVED her. She taught biology and after spending a day with her, it was evident she has a passionate soul for teaching and keeping her bees. This gracious, southern woman welcomed me to her home, clad with adorable bee paraphernalia, to teach me about the honeybees and reiterate their importance to our society. Bees are full of life, and it's truly amazing how they function as a colony and how vital they are to human life. When I asked her why she chose to become a beekeeper, she simply said, "The Lord just fascinated me with why he created bees, so when I retired, I decided it was my time to keep them."

Honeybees are a vital and important part of our agriculture, as they pollinate around 80% of our plants to produce fruits and vegetables. These fascinating, flying critters are not pests, however, they are the movers + shakers of our environment that keep the circle of life circling. If honeybees are healthy, our environment is healthy, which reflects in our overall health. Honeybees are important, y'all! Over the last 8 years, they have seen a significant collapse. In 2006, Colony Collapse Disorder, CCD, became a huge and mysterious killer of honeybees. Since the major collapse, CCD has killed 30% of the honeybee population each year. While many scientists and researchers now believe that it was a cyclical phenomena, possibly tied to certain pesticides, honeybees still aren't as abundant as they used to be, therefore putting our agriculture industry at risk. Could you imagine a life without apples, cherries, broccoli or any type of fresh produce? Or honey for that matter?!

Since then, many boutique apiaries have popped up across the globe. Everyday people raising honeybees to pollinate plants in hopes of improving the environment. Urban beekeeping boomed a few years ago utilizing rooftop space in big cities for bee hives and small gardens as people started to realize how important these relatively peaceful creatures are to securing our food supply. Also, people have realized all the health benefits that come from consuming raw, local honey, which unlike tupelo or clover honey, has a complex and dynamic taste as it comes from the nectar of a myriad of plants. It helps with allergies, is full of vitamins and minerals, and has natural antibacterial and antiviral qualities. Mrs. Beverly advised us to start sipping a tablespoon of honey everyday before bed because it's best for our health and contains tryptophan which helps us sleep. On top of the many benefits of honeybees and their honey, these buzzing critters and their apiaries are some of the most sustainable beings and "farms" around! Here's the sustainable cycle that Mrs. Beverly experiences at her apiary:

The queen bee lays her eggs, or brood, to create drones (males) and worker bees (female),
These bees grow up to fertilize the brood or pollinate her garden,
Then they take the nectar to the hives in their nectar pockets, which then goes through the cycle of becoming honey,
Mrs. Beverly takes the hives apart to harvest the honey,
The wax is cut off and honey is extracted,
The honey gets bottled up to sell and the wax gets melted down for candles (some people like to make beauty products with it!),
The equipment used to extract the honey then gets put outside and the honeybees clean it spick and span as they eat up all the honey as one of their sources of food,
And the cycle starts again!

Look at her just sucking up the sweet honey off of that glove!

And we found the Queen Bee!

Look at all the honey dripping down the sides of the extractor!

The natural creation of something so geometrical like honeycomb just fascinates me.

Mmmmmm, honey!

That's a load of beeswax!

Such an adorable little honeybee scooter for her grandbaby!

Me and Beverly in her garden, followed of course, by an out of focus selfie!

For more information on the importance of the honeybee, in addition to the fight they are facing, check out some of the articles below:

http://www.backyardbeekeepers.com/facts.html
http://science.time.com/2014/02/13/can-urban-beekeeping-stop-the-beepocalypse/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130510-honeybee-bee-science-european-union-pesticides-colony-collapse-epa-science/
http://saveourbees.com/plight/
http://time.com/559/the-plight-of-the-honeybee/
http://www.swansonvitamins.com/blog/guest-authors-on-natural-health/raw-honey-the-complete-story

Phew! This is the last installment of our summer travels to England & Ireland. The last few days have been full of great feedback & I wish I was able to take all of you with me! Unfortunately, I could only fit 50 lbs. in my luggage and my camera equipment is about half of that weight and Cadbury Chocolate was definitely the other half of that. If you missed the earlier parts to this, you can see part 1, 2, 3, and 4 by clicking on their link! Once again, going through these pictures, I just sit and thank God that I'm so blessed to make all these expeditions. I really do hope to be able to do this for some sort of good one day, so if you know a way I can impact the world through photography or a story that needs to be told, hit a girl up.

For my photographers, these photos are all from my D800 or my Nikon FM with Fuji Pro 400h film (side note: how coincidental the light leak on the opening image!). These are from 3 different day trips to the towns of Dingle & Cork and the Cliffs of Moher. Each such a different place, but each with a gorgeous, jaw-dropping drives through the Irish countryside. Never in my life have I seen such beautiful light just pick and choose what it wants to illuminate and actually be able to capture it in a single frame. Never have I seen such thick fog become a luscious gray backdrop for some of the most colorful buildings & street life I've seen. Never have I been able to stand over 700 ft. above sea level & look down to not only see the sight of where Harry Potter & Dumbledore's quest to destroy horcruxes began, but to also just inhale such a fresh sea breeze, that I realized that everything I'm doing in my life now has some sort of purpose and not have my fears overcome me. And never have I been able to meet such wonderful people, who despite terrible economic conditions, continue to strive to make their lives and their country beautiful by just caring and being thankful for what they do have in life.

We set out one day to explore the Dingle Peninsula & then the town of Dingle, home to the famous Murphy's Ice Cream! The countryside was amazing, and the peninsula unlike anything I've ever experienced. There were even surf lessons happening in that 55-degree weather! More power to you, Irishmen, you couldn't pay me to get in that water.

Meet Frank, one of our drivers! He was such a sweet and hilarious guy! He also knew the best spots for photos & stew!

So many Irish wildflowers were picked for pressing!

ICE CREAM & STEW!

The next day we headed out to the city of Cork. We did some shopping, some exploring, and found some utterly delicious food at the Idaho Cafe! I even found a sweet shop that had my favorite Haribo eggs & gummy dolphins, which reminded me of my years in England as a kid. Although, when I thought the gummy dolphins were sharks, the clerk was quick to correct me that they were "dolphins, not sharks, because the Irish are nice and the English are sharky people." After we left Cork, we stopped in Blarney to visit the castle & kiss the Blarney Stone. While I decided to overcome my fear of spiral staircases and heights, I leaned back head first and kissed the stone for luck. Then wiped hand sanitizer all over my lips, haha. May favorite part though were the poison gardens, which made me feel like I was in Professor Sprout's class at Hogwarts!

Our last day, we headed out to the Cliffs of Moher. Such a beautiful place. We stopped along the way to grab some photos of some very, very old (I'm talking Middle Ages era), graveyards that just hang out in old castle ruins or along the beach. Once we got to the Cliffs, the view was just spectacular. No photo, I think, could ever do it justice. It really just makes you stop and take a breath of fresh air. I wish we could've been there during sunset or sunrise, but it was just too far away for a day trip to try and get there at a certain time, but nevertheless, the Cliffs are stunning anytime of day!

What I would give to be a cow who lives at the Cliffs!

We stopped in Adare, on our way back to Springfield Castle and stopped in to this quaint little Abbey Church. Adare was a beautiful little town with thatched cottages, but was really overrun with senior citizen tourists. Must be the golfing!

And here are some of the Instagram's from the last leg of our trip! Enjoy!

Thank you again for following along with these adventures! I'm always up for shooting, so let me know if you're in!