Chapter 1 Blue Bee
"Bad review! After I bought it and kept it for a while, sediment appeared in the bottle. It goes bad too easily! I still put it in the refrigerator." "Don't buy fake
ones, they taste sour."
"It's known as There are zero additives, but you use this kind of fake product to fool people? Reported."
"Huayu Town is no longer good."
"This kind of individual beekeeper is really unreliable. You have to buy big brands for honey, the quality is guaranteed, and the taste is good. It tastes much better."
Looking at the new negative reviews in the comment area, Hua Mi's blood pressure instantly rose, and her good mood for the day ended.
It's not that he's narrow-minded.
When he opens an online store to sell honey, he is not afraid of negative customer reviews and complaints. As long as your comments are well-founded, he will naturally accept your opinions humbly and make corrections.
The problem is that these negative reviews are typical of outsiders.
First about sediment.
What is honey? It is a supersaturated liquid. It is easy to produce glucose crystals within a certain temperature range. If it does not exist, it only means that the concentration of Baume is too low. Generally speaking, it means that the water content is too much and it is an inferior product.
Secondly, regarding the taste, the taste of honey produced by different flower species is very different, and different bee species also have a slight influence. However, pure natural honey has some sour taste. If not, it means that additives are used to make up for this aspect. taste.
The honey sold by Huami is said to have zero additives, so it will never add anything other than honey. The ingredient list only has "honey" as one raw material. You raise your own bees and brew it, so you are a no-brainer!
But what these ordinary people don’t know is that they are used to industrial saccharin, and when they first eat something purely natural, they feel that it tastes wrong.
Hua Mi wanted to reply to these negative reviews one by one, but her fingers were hovering on the keyboard and she didn't press them down. She stared at the screen in a daze.
At this point, replying is of no use.
"The life of beekeepers is getting more and more difficult."
On the store promotion page, the words "Produced by Huayu Town" used to be a guarantee of quality and reputation, but now they are like a joke.
Once upon a time, the three words "Huayu Town" were the benchmark in the industry.
Huayu Town is a small town with a long history. Most of the aboriginal people are named Hua. Half of them are engaged in beekeeping and the other half are engaged in flower planting.
It is rich in flowers and has a beautiful environment. The honey produced here has a unique taste and is cheap, and is sold all over the country.
Hua Mi has been proud of his hometown since he was a child. The colorful flower fields and the sweet taste of honey are his beautiful childhood memories.
So he decisively came back and inherited his grandfather's beekeeping business.
Unfortunately, bad luck happened. Within a year of taking over, Huayu Town began to decline, and now it has hit rock bottom.
Of course, in addition to the current proliferation of industrially blended honey in the market, there are also reasons for Huayu Town itself.
The environmental problems brought about by the development of industrialization are becoming increasingly severe. Huayu Town is not a paradise and is inevitably affected.
For example, due to changes in environmental factors, the quality of several specialty flowers in Huayu Town has been greatly reduced. Some of them can no longer be grown at all, and they cannot survive after being grown. They are expected to become extinct in the near future.
There is an industrial smell in the air, and the Luohua River runs through the middle of Huayu Town. It was so clear in my memory, but now it is almost turning into a smelly ditch.
How can you brew good honey in such an environment?
The advantages of additive-free honey are therefore wiped out and even become a disadvantage.
And those honeys with various artificial additives have a much better taste.
And it doesn’t matter whether the nectar is collected from flowers or not, even if the bees are kept indoors and fed sugar water.
Anyway, the taste can be adjusted with additives, which not only saves the cost of growing flowers, but also ensures production all year round.
Under the double impact, most of the beekeepers in Huayu Town have been forced to change careers, and only a handful of them are still persisting.
"I can't hold on anymore."
That sweet and pure taste, just like my childhood, is gone forever.
Hua Mi sighed and closed the store interface, out of sight and out of mind.
He stood up and walked to the backyard. There were originally several flower fields planned in the backyard, but now only one of them is planted. It is the most common rapeseed flower, and it looks like a dull yellow.
Experienced beekeepers all know that the growth of honey-source flowers is related to the strength of the bee colony, and the two influence each other.
30 beehives are scattered around the flower field, and bees can be seen rising and falling in the flower field with the naked eye.
At his best, he owned more than a hundred beehives and was considered a big beekeeper. But life is often like this. It takes time to get better, but once things get worse, it is much easier to roll downhill than uphill.
There are now only thirty beehives left, each containing six to seven thousand bees, all of which are Apis cerana, commonly known as "bumblebees".
It is the flowering period, which should be the most active period for bee colonies, but these worker bees are visibly tired. Some worker bees simply lie in the hive and do not come out. They are simply unworthy of the title of "hard-working little bees".
Beekeeping pursues strong bee colonies. A strong bee colony means long overall lifespan, strong resistance, and high productivity. The most intuitive manifestation is the efficiency and high quality of honey production, which can be understood as an elite army.
On the contrary, a weak swarm is like an old, weak, sick and disabled army, with its combat ability greatly reduced.
The strength of a bee colony is not only related to the species, but also closely related to the environment.
These thirty swarms of bees seemed to have seen their fate of being eliminated, and they were as unmotivated as their masters.
Of course, as China is so big, there are always places suitable for beekeeping. For example, Xinjiang Province has very suitable natural conditions.
But it takes a lot of courage to leave the land where our ancestors have lived for generations to work in other places. Besides, transportation costs are also a problem. His current asset situation can no longer let him mess with it.
Hua Mi walked to the middle of the flower field without wearing any protection.
Bees have a strong sense of territory and collective consciousness. If an average person stands in the middle, they will easily be stung like a pig's head.
However, as a beekeeper, he has stayed in the bee colony for a long time. Once the bees are familiar with him, they will basically not attack him unless they seek death.
"You little guys, don't be lazy, enjoy the good news..."
When Hua Mi leaned over to check the bees, he unexpectedly saw a strange bee lying on the rapeseed flower. It looked incompatible with the surrounding bees.
Even with Hua Mi's familiarity with bees, she couldn't tell what kind it was.
It is very small, even smaller than a bumblebee. Its whole body is light blue, with circles of white lines on its body. The weirdest thing is its pair of compound eyes, which also have circles of lines, similar to the samsara eyes. It seems like - strictly speaking, this can no longer be called a compound eye.
"Mutant bees? But this has become too much."
It was a little out of Hua Mi's understanding. He didn't touch it rashly. He wanted to take out his phone and take a picture first, but when he touched his pocket, he found that he didn't bring it out. .
At this moment, the weird blue bee suddenly flew up and danced in a circle in front of Hua Mi. Its trajectory was a very ordinary oval.
This is the instinctive behavior of bees. Hua Mi has seen it a lot, so there is nothing surprising. But the next scene almost shattered Hua Mi's world view.
The blue bee drags a blue trail, forming an oval "hole" in mid-air. The hole is filled with psychedelic colors, like a portal in a game.
Judging from the reactions of the surrounding worker bees, they were not aware of the existence of this "wormhole". Many worker bees even passed through it directly without any impact, just like an illusion caused by some optical phenomenon.
Hua Mi felt the urge to reach out and test...
The blue bee took the opportunity to land on the back of his hand, and its pincers pierced right through!
"Hiss—"
Hua Mi woke up from the sting.
The blue bee lay firmly on the back of his hand, but its body slowly became transparent. In contrast, light blue lines appeared where it was stung, as if the color of the blue bee was injected into the back of Hua Mi's hand through its pincers.
After only two or three seconds, the Blue Bee disappeared completely, as if it had never existed.
Hua Mi suddenly spun around, lost his balance, fell forward, and happened to fall into the "wormhole". He disappeared from the flower field in an instant.
The "wormhole" also closed in an instant.
The rapeseed fields were quiet, and the little bees were working hard.
(End of chapter)