Rosh Hashanah
From Trees to Bees
HOW APPLES AND HONEY ARRIVE ON THE PLATE
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
A tabitazn / AdobeStock
t an ACME or Giant or Wegmans, a bear-shaped
squeeze bottle of honey can cost about $5; an apple
is about a buck. The drive or walk to the grocery store
might be 15 minutes, and it takes even less time to chop the
apple and dunk it in the viscous honey.

Fulfi lling the tradition of eating apples and honey for the
new year is a simple aff air on the surface. But beyond the
trip to the grocery store and the kitchen prep time, there are
thousands of hours that have gone into the creation of the
holiday-defi ning dish.

“We’re kind of used to just having food available ... We need
something, we go out and buy it,” said Don Shump, owner of
the Philadelphia Bee Co. “We don’t really think about how much
eff ort goes into that.”
Shump is the adviser for Congregation Rodeph Shalom’s
Holy Honey apiary where he, along with Penn State University
student Arthur LaBan, who helped start the hives as part of
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Courtesy of Linvilla Orchards
Rosh Hashanah
his bar mitzvah project years ago,
care for the bees seasonally. This
year, the apiary is predicted to pro-
duce about 100-170 seven-ounce
jars of honey, most of which will be
sold to Rodeph Shalom and Jewish
community members.

Of course, Shump and LaBan aren’t
the only ones Holy Honey patrons
should be thanking for their High
Holiday fare. The apiary consists of
anywhere between two to 10 hives,
with about 60,000 bees per hive.

With each worker bee — having a
lifespan of just six weeks — pro-
ducing about 1/12 of a teaspoon of
honey in their lifetime, it would be an
understatement to say that teamwork
makes the dream work.

Rodeph Shalom’s bees pollinate
wildfl owers within about a two-mile
radius of the synagogue, mostly
along the Schuylkill River bank.

Scout bees will explore the area
and return to the hive and perform
a waggle dance to the rest of the
hive — a fi gure-eight motion with
Linvilla Orchards in Media produces 200-800 bushels of apples per its 25
acres, with each bushel containing more than 100 apples.

a straight line down in the middle.

The direction of the straight line is
the direction the bees should travel
to the pollen source in relation to
the sun. The length of the dance
correlates to the distance the bees
should travel.

“For every second that they dance,
that’s about a kilometer,” Shump
said. The static charge generated by
the bees’ fl ight results in pollen get-
ting stuck to the bee’s body, which is
pushed to their back legs by combs
on their front legs. They suck up
nectar through a proboscis, a straw-
shaped tongue.

When they return to their hives,
the worker bees dispense the nectar,
about 25-95% water, into the vertical
comb and beat their wings, drawing
out moisture until the resulting honey
is less than 18% water.

“At that point, honey gets hygro-
scopic, starved of water. And so any
bacteria that touches it, the honey
rips the water out of the bacteria
and kills it,” Shump said. “That’s why
honey stays good forever.”
While local food can be defi ned
as anything within a 100-mile radius,
Shump said, the hyperlocal honey is
not only a worthy product, a medium
amber color, but also an opportunity
for Shump to have greater respect
for his food.

For LaBan, who uses the honey
from the Holy Honey hives for his own
Rosh Hashanah celebrations, his con-
nection with his Judaism grows a little
sweeter too.

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WISHING YOU A JOYOUS NEW YEAR!
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