How to Suck Honey from Honeysuckle

Today I met Ben, who taught me how to pluck a honeysuckle blossom and taste the clear droplet of sweet nectar (before a bee gets it). Ben says when he and his friends are outside they sometimes get distracted by honeysuckle and forget the game they were playing. He says, furthermore, that honeysuckle honey is addictive. In the 20-second video, Ben shows how it's done. Written instructions are below.
Written instructions:

1. Pluck 1 trumpet-shaped honeysuckle blossom.
2. Find the tiny green bulb at the blossom's base. Pinch it lightly and slowly pull it out of the blossom. This draws out the thin green stamen.
3. On the tip of the stamen will be your drop of honey. Place on tongue.

Sweet Love

Honeybee in a wild rose today. Don't believe the doomsayers who claim they're all gone.

Beautiful and Rare

Highways here in Ozark foothills used to be lined with native coneflowers, the flowers in the photo. Then somebody decided they were a commodity called echinacea, and lowlifes went around ripping up every single one by the roots, even on County Highway F where the road is perched on a steep and treacherous ridge. They even stole them from patrolled, private land -- coming up the river by boat and sneaking onto the property. Rip, rip. To them, Missouri is worth $6 a pound.

The word from the naturalists is that the bee population, nationwide, is way down. To my own eyes it's obvious only that the coneflower population is way down, so I planted my own, and they attract plenty of beautiful bees.

The Honey Treatment for Hayfever

"Take a tablespoon of honey each day for 14 days, starting in early March. It's best if it's honey from a bee farm in your area."

Somwhere I heard that, and desperate to quit sneezing and squirting $25 bottles of prescription corticosteroids up my nose for 8 months of the year -- to ease my miserable, adult-onset hayfever -- I tried it!

I will testify on a Bible that molds and dust and smoke still bothered me -- but it seems the trees and grasses didn't get to me, or they got to me less; and out here, that is more than half the battle.

My dad was a peasant farmer from Europe and he insisted, "Eat a spoonful of honey a day and you will never get sick." We laughed at him and said "Yuck." Don't think you can smoke and eat fatty meats 3x/day and that honey will protect you. He thought it might, but it didn't. But he got his information from somewhere in his culture, and I heard it repeated by some New Ager years later and said to myself, "It can't HURT to try."