Follow The Honey Bird

A Global Taste of Honey for Questrom Grad Student

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Follow the Honey is a family affair: The shop carries honey from local vendors, as well as varieties from around the country and the world. Canning says her goal is to have honey from each state.

How Wild Birds Team Up With Humans To Guide Them To Honey

The store also offers everything bee- and honey-related, from beginner beekeeping equipment to jewelry to kits for making honey wine. To give customers an idea of what it takes to make honey and to spark conversation about the food, Canning has live bees on display and honey on tap that can be dispensed for purchase. The type of honey on tap rotates often, depending on availability, and Canning says she plans to install two additional taps during the year. Therefore, one can be for Massachusetts honey, one for honey from another state, and one for an international honey.

Canning says she also hopes to be able to harvest honey from her own bees in Warwick this year under a Follow the Honey label. Raw honey can crystallize and firm up, but Canning says it does not mean it is bad or expired.

Any honey that has hardened can be liquefied by dipping the container in a pan of simmering water. The study reveals a mutually beneficial partnership for two very different species. The Yao people in Mozambique harvest honey using traditional techniques that have been passed down for generations.

KIRKUS REVIEW

Hunters head out into the bush in search of bee hives, but they do not set out alone. They always call a friend: Honeyguides eat beeswax but are not especially good at obtaining it, since bees tend to react strongly to intruders who enter their hives. Previous studies with other African tribes found that honeyguides seek out humans to help them. The birds produce a unique call to alert hunters they have found a beehive. Then they flit from tree to tree, leading their human companions to the hive, where they patiently await their reward.

The Yao dispatch the bees using smoke and chop down the tree holding the hive, so they can retrieve the sought-after honeycomb.

Once the honey is extracted, the beeswax goes to the honeyguides, along with many of the stunned bees. Although honeyguides appear to cooperate with humans, their relationship with other avian species is quite different.

Honeyguides are "brood parasites," meaning they rely on other birds to hatch their young. Honeyguide nestlings hatch with hook-shaped beaks, which they use with deadly effectiveness to guarantee their survival in a crowded nest.

The newly hatched honeyguides use their hooked beaks to toss other chicks, the original occupants of the nest, to the ground below. They also puncture their host's eggs and kill her nestlings with repeated slashes of their beaks. Or were they just seeking out humans independently to enlist help in their quest for beeswax?

Spottiswoode played three different sounds that might be of interest to honeyguides: Honeyguides really are paying attention to signals that humans communicate back at them.

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Human and wild bird interactions are commonplace. Many people own bird feeders, or go bird watching.

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Geoff LeBaron, director of the Christmas Bird Count program for the National Audubon Society, notes that many birds will recognize the human responsible for filling the feeder. Bird watchers and counters also use a method called pishing to attract birds. This involves making a "psh psh psh" noise to arouse birds' curiosity. But neither of these examples is the same as what happens between honey hunters and honeyguides, LeBaron told VOA.

Mozambique's Yao are not the only humans the honeyguides have contact with.

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