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Judaism has some interesting connections to bees and honey. We can see this from different Jewish texts, traditions, rituals, stories, and historical figures. From honey on Rosh Hashanah, to prophetesses named after bees, through references to bees through metaphor, to the Holy Land, the Land of Milk and Honey. There’s a lot to learn about Jewish culture from paying attention to the historical presence of bees!

You may wonder: How could one even think that bee-honey is not kosher? The Torah refers to the Land of Israel as “a Land flowing with milk and honey”! Certainly the Torah would not choose a non-kosher product as a means for describing the beauty of the Land of Israel! This may come as a surprise, but the honey mentioned in the verse about “milk and honey” is not bee-honey, rather it is fig-honey. Another excerpt from the Talmud Tractate Berachot interprets the verse, “It is a Land of wheat, barley, grapes, figs and pomegranates, a Land of olives and honey” — as referring to date-honey….

Torah is like honey, “The Torah is sweeter than honey to my mouth,” sang King David. So just like a honeybee spreads the news of the sweet nectar it found to the rest of the colony, so too should we spread the word of Torah to those who are still unfamiliar with it.

A bee knows that spreading her knowledge is important for her entire colony to prosper. By spreading the sweetness of Torah and mitzvahs to others, you can enhance the capability of the Jewish people to fulfill its purpose, and to be a “light unto the nations.”…

The LaBans reached out to Don Shump, a professional beekeeper and owner of Philadelphia Bee Co., and discussed turning the synagogue’s roof into an apiary. Arthur LaBan raised about $1,000 from friends and family to fund the creation of two Langstroth hives, comprised of rectangular boxes with removable frames for the bees to build combs inside. Each hive is home to approximately 60,000 European honey bees. Today, there are four such hives on the roof for a total of about 250,000 bees….

Yes, devorah is Hebrew for “bee.” It’s also the name of two great women mentioned in the Torah. The first was the nursemaid of our matriarch Rebecca. The more famous Devorah, however, was Devorah the prophetess, who judged and taught the Jewish nation for forty years (1107–1067 BCE). For more, see The Prophetess Deborah. What is so special about a bee that these great women should be named after it? The Midrash1 says that the Jewish people and the Torah are compared to bees in several ways.…

A brief entomological review of this remarkable insect is necessary in order to understand the kashrus status of bee derivatives. Bees suck nectar from flowers with their proboscis (mouth). The nectar mixes with saliva and is swallowed into the honey sac, where enzymes from the saliva break down (invert) the nectar into honey. The nectar is never “digested” it is merely transformed into honey by the saliva. Upon the bee’s return to the hive, the honey is regurgitated and the water is evaporated, thereby thickening it into honey which is then sealed in the honeycomb. Beekeepers then extract millions of drops of honey from the cavities of the honeycomb by using a machine that applies centrifugal force to the comb.
The Gemara3 explains that honey is kosher since it is not an actual secretion of the bee; the bee functions only as a carrier and facilitator4. Honey is kosher flower nectar, which enters the bee’s honey sac and is transformed into honey. The second opinion in the Gemara permits honey because of a g’zairas hakasuv, a deduction from a pasuk.5 Therefore, the halacha is that honey is kosher despite the fact that it comes from the non-kosher honeybee.6 One may purchase without a kosher certification 100% pure bee honey from Montana, North Dakota, or any state or country.7…

The custom of eating honey on Rosh Hashanah goes back many hundreds of years and, according to some sources, refers specifically to the honey made by bees, as opposed to, say, date honey (made by people!). Bees’ honey is a unique and fascinating substance and its production is truly one of the wonders of the world. To produce 1lb of honey, bees have to visit two million flowers and travel a distance equivalent to twice around the earth.…

Honey from bees was cultivated in ancient times in Israel. In Tel Rehov, in Israel’s northern region, archeologists found the oldest apiary (commercial beehive) in the Middle East, dating from the 10th Century BCE, over 3,000 years ago. Made up of about 100 beehives, it seems to have produced about half a ton of honey annually….

Learn about the amazing world of bees Hashem created with Rabbi Daniel Senter! Introduction by Rabbi Paysach Krohn Produced by Kolrom Multimedia.

The honeybee didn’t come from one of beekeeper Lin’s Apidae. But Lin, along with Israel’s 449 other beekeepers and the nation’s tree-keepers from Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), has been working to ensure a longer flowering season. He has been scouting out sites for the planting of some 80 varieties of eucalyptus trees around Israel, at a rate of 100,000 each year. Israel’s bees haven’t suffered from Colony Collapse Disorder, the ailment that has decimated the global bee population and threatens commercial fruit and vegetable crops in Europe and the US. Bees, along with birds, bats and butterflies, pollinate fruit and vegetable crops, as well as the other flora and fauna that help sustain cattle and other animals…