The annual N.C. Honey Festival is saluting the honeybee this weekend. The event will be held on Saturday, Sept. 9, beginning at 10 a.m. The day dedicated to the tiny-winged honeybee heroes will feature food trucks, vendors, local honey and beekeepers, museum exhibits and Storytime, music, cornhole, mead-tasting by Farmacy on Main at 11 a.m., and a Sip and Paint by the Columbus County Arts Council at 1:30 p.m.
The mission of the North Carolina Honey Festival is to highlight the significance of bees in the environment, celebrate honey and honey products, encourage bee-friendly practices, and promote beekeeping in all of North Carolina’s regions.
Honeybees and other pollinators are essential to a delicate ecosystem that most people aren’t aware of. Somewhere between 75 and 95 percent of all flowering plants on the earth need help with pollination. Pollinators provide services to over 180,000 different plant species and more than 1,200 crops. That means that one out of every three bites of food you eat is there because of the work they do.
Tanya Hiltz, beekeeper at Lake Waccamaw, said that bees will spend their entire life making honey. “Bees in the summer only live for 2 to 4 weeks. They work and collect honey to store for a winter they will not see.” She said one of her favorite things about bees is how selfless they are.
One worker bee will produce one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in their lifetime. In order to produce one pound of honey, about two million flowers must be visited.
This will be the seventh annual celebration in downtown Whiteville. Local beekeepers are encouraged to pedal their wares of the bee related kind, and exhibits will be on display to educate the general public.
To see a list of events and any updates to the schedule, you can visit the N.C. Honey Festival Facebook page.
