Apiary Diary - July 2021
Updated: Dec 23, 2021
First honey harvest of the season!
In early July we harvested a small amount of honey (the excess that bees produce)—our first this season. As promised, we emailed our ‘honey alerts’ to our subscribers, and within a few hours it was all spoken for! (Don't worry—more is due in early August.)
In this month’s Apiary Diary we look at how honey is made—from flower to honey pot!
How and why bees do make honey?
Adult bees use honey as a high-energy food, and—combining it with protein-rich pollen—to rear their young. It starts as nectar, a sugary liquid obtained from flowering plants—trees, bushes, fruit and vegetables, garden flowers and wildflowers (the bees have their favourites!). Nectar comprises several different sugar types (sucrose, fructose, glucose and maltose), and valuable trace elements and proteins; the exact balance depends on the plant variety and weather conditions.
‘Forager’ bees collect nectar from hundreds of flowers on each flight, using their long tongues to extract it. They store it in temporarily in their ‘honey stomach’ (separate to their food stomach) while in flight. During the same excursion, they may also collect pollen, tree resin or water, each of which the hive needs for special purposes).
On returning to the hive, they pass on the nectar to awaiting ‘processor’ bees, which, within about half an hour have stored it into cells (honeycomb). The transfer between bees adds special enzymes that alter the nectar's chemistry; it takes on anti-septic, anti-microbial, and anti-fungal qualities, and the sugars are adapted to become more concentrated and nutritious—a bee (and human) superfood!
Initially while in the honey cells, this proto-honey has a comparatively high water content—about 70 per cent; but this is gradually evaporated away by bee clusters fanning their wings. It becomes true honey when it reaches the right concentration, with just under 18 per cent water. This prevents any possibility of fermentation, and honey can be kept for years—or indefinitely—without spoiling. Some of the honey is placed near the developing brood, while most is stored away for future use.
Honey varieties: mono-floral and poly-floral
Around the world, some bee farmers produce mono-floral honey by siting their hives in an area dominated by one plant species (heather, almond, eucalyptus or whatever). Honey from these set-ups is so branded, as long as the producer can guarantee that 75 per cent of the nectar is foraged from that source.
While this produces distinctive flavours, when flowering is over their bees may face a dearth (because they are in a monoculture 'dead zone'), or they need to be transported elsewhere; they are effectively ‘itinerant workers’ rather than a permanent part of the local ecosystem. Less reputable bee farmers feed their bees corn syrup to hasten production, but this inferior product is not nectar-based, and essentially hoodwinks the paying public.
What about our own bees? Since bees will forage up to two or three miles away, we cannot know exactly where they have visited—but it is safe to assume many flower varieties!
I regularly observe individual bees returning to their hive with different types of pollen, each with a distinctive colour, and see them visiting flowers in our own garden and beyond. Our recently harvested honey will include nectar foraged since the early spring: many varieties of blossom, buttercups, dandelions and cow parsley, then linden, blackberry, lavender, borage, poppies and so on. The current crop is a rich golden-brown, and flows freely (indicating the absence of oil seed rape, which sets honey hard and is extremely difficult to extract).
How we harvest honey naturally
The hive’s main honey storage area is separated from the nursery area (the brood), so that we don’t disturb the brood when removing honey frames. If, on inspection, the honey-laden combs are all ‘capped’ (sealed with beeswax), this means that water evaporation has been completed, and it is ready for harvest. The honeycombs are carefully removed (any straggler bees are gently brushed back into their hive—goose feathers are best for this!), boxed up and brought inside for processing.
We extract our honey manually using nothing but a long knife, and a few graded mesh sieves and containers, and gravity. (Proximity to a sink is essential, as things can quickly get sticky!).
Thinly slicing off the wax capping exposes the raw golden liquid, so that it can be drawn down drained through a triple sieve to first remove larger pieces of wax, and then finer hive debris, leaving pure honey with traces of pollen in the lower container.
It then settles in a honey tank, before being transferred to jars via a ‘honey gate’ (a simple valve), which keeps bottling clean and simple. Finally, the jars are labelled and sealed, ready for our customers, and a record is kept, including batch numbers and the contributing hives.
Throughout the process, no heat, power nor machinery are used: the honey in the jar is as pure that in the hive.
Beekeepers use other methods, sometimes involving ‘spinning’ frames to extract the honey (using centrifugal force, rather than gravity), which are all fine. But mass-produced honey is typically forced through micro-filters at high pressure—removing even the pollen, and heated to prolong runniness—but compromising the healthy enzymes in the process.
Keeping it local
We offer our honey to local folk, who often purchase it ‘at the gate’. Quite a few people say that it helps in the hay-fever season (the idea being that its blend of local pollens can help you to develop a tolerance), and to guard against winter ailments (with its antiseptic and antimicrobial qualities supporting our immune systems).
Mostly people just love it for its amazing flavour!
We have been approached by small local shops and businesses seeking high-quality local products, produced naturally with minimal or zero food miles. We aim to supply more as the apiary grows, but will always 'keep it local'.
We keep some for ourselves (of course!), and never harvest all the available honey: it is essential for the bees to have sufficient to overwinter and rebuild their numbers in the early spring; they always come first!
Eco campaign: to slow pollinator decline, should chemical spraying of private gardens and public spaces be outlawed?
"Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, said outlawing chemical spraying in the country’s 22m private gardens, along with road verges, parks and other green spaces, could slow insect decline by creating a network of nature-friendly habitats where insects can recover." Read more … and check out the government petition.
Mark, Botley Meadow Bees, 31 July 2021