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What could be nicer than a slice of good crusty bread and butter liberally spread with delicious honey? Most people if asked would say that it is gathered by bees from the various flowers of the field, hedgerow and garden. This is more or less correct, but a little more information on the subject might be interesting. First then as to the bees. These are divided into two main groups - the solitary species and the social species, the latter only being of interest to us for our honey production. Social bees again fall into two main classes in general - Bombus (bumble bee) and Apis (honey bee). Bumble bee colonies, as with wasps, do not over-winter, only the young queens surviving in hibernation to commence new colonies the following spring. However honey bee colonies do come through the winter intact, and require a considerable quantity of honey in their combs to see them through.
The
object of successful bee-keeping is to induce your bees to produce a
large surplus of honey above their own winter requirements. Innumerable
books have been written on this aspect of management, and I would not
attempt to go into the subject in this short article. With a good strain
of bees working in a good district, and in really good summers (how
rare!) yields of as much as 300lbs have been removed from a single colony.
This is of course quite exceptional, although crops of around 100lb
are not at all unusual. However taking good and bad A
hundred years ago bees were kept in straw skeps, and to obtain their
honey were killed at the end of each season. Sulphur fumes were used
for this barbaric procedure. The combs were then cut out and pressed,
a rather unhygenic method resulting in a product that would hardly meet
today’s European standard! However the introduction of the movable comb
hive changed all this. Today the combs in their wooden frames are removed
and put into an extractor. In this
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WHERE
THE BEE SUCKS ...
So
how is this honey produced? What is gathered from the flowers is the
raw material nectar which is processed by the bees into honey. This
nectar when collected and deposited in the cells of the combs has a
water content of around 75 per cent. However the heat produced within
the hive, coupled with strong air currents, achieved by the bees fanning
vigorously with their wings, reduces this moisture down to about 20
per cent. Finally each cell is injected with a minute quantity of acid
(a preservative) and then is sealed with a thin capping of wax. Honey
in this condition, if it is kept quite dry, has been known to keep perfectly
for many hundreds of years.