nhb baseball

July 29th marked our third Honey Night of the season, watching the Durham Bulls play the Buffalo Bisons for some really good Triple-A baseball action.  The Bulls fans are enthusiastic, fun-loving and knowledgeable.

One of the biggest surprises of our sponsorship with minor league baseball has been the very high level of knowledge that the fans in general have about baseball.  The fans are intense in their interest and love to follow “their” players as the players go from the minor leagues into the major leagues.  This is especially true of the Durham Bulls, the last stop up the ladder as the Bulls players have the potential to sign with the Tampa Bay Rays. 

As of this writing, the Rays are in the thick of the race for the penant; perhaps a bit unexpected, but it has added to all of the fun and enthusiasm.  In a minor league baseball game fans are able to root for the minor league team, but also have a loyalty to the major league team that is the ultimate goal and dream of every player working his way up to the top.  In minor league baseball parks, fans often sit just a few feet from the playing field; they get to “know” their favorite players and love to cheer them on and wish them well. Understand also, that Triple-A baseball may be the minor leagues, but it really isn’t “minor.”  The Triple-A level is extremely good baseball.

Honey Night at the Durham Bulls added to the excitement of the game.  We gave honey surveys to the first 200 fans (they got gifts for helping us with their opinions), we had a little picnic, Sweeeet! banners were placed all over the ballpark, our great spokesman, former major leaguer (and former Durham Bull) Turk Wendell was on hand to sign autographs and pose with fans, and best of all, we gave out 1,000 little bottles of pure honey.

The biggest surprise of all though is one that has had us scratching our heads.  In fact, we’re a little embarrassed to talk about it, and we’re sure glad our honeybees can’t read!  It seems that when we looked at the answers to our honey survey, a certain percentage of people believe that something is added to pure honey other than honey!  We also found this trend in Iowa for the Iowa Cubs at the Iowa Cubs Honey Night, and in Stockton, at the Stockton Ports Honey Night. 

Nearly everyone knows that bees make honey.  Honey is a product of nature and it’s just about as natural of a natural energy booster as you can get.  Yet – some of the same people who know that bees make honey might be confused as to what goes into a bottle of honey.  The answer is simple: Honey!  Bees gather the nectar from flowers and place it in a little honey sack on their bodies.  They bring the nectar back to the beehive and they give it to worker bees to store it away.  The worker bees fan the honey to get rid of some the moisture and that’s what is placed in each bottle of honey we eat.

Just like the Durham Bulls, honey is in a class by itself.