Lifestyle

How Honey Bees Make Honey

August 24, 2015

How Honey Bees Make Honey | greensideup.ieOur First Harvest From Honey Bees

Becoming a novice beekeeper has been a challenge, an unexpected expense, an adrenaline rush and more than anything, a privilege as we’ve been able to see these precious pollinators working in our garden. After the initial pleasure of finding the Honey Bees in our hive back in June 2014 and the fear that I hadn’t a clue how to look after them (years of looking after themselves didn’t cross my mind) I signed up for South Kildare Beekeepers excellent beginners course and followed all the instructions they and my experienced, neighbouring mentor John shared with me.

How Honey Bees Make Honey | greensideup.ieWe recently harvested our first, fourteen precious jars of locally foraged, pure Irish honey and the following article explains how the honey was made. But to begin, a short explanation about the honey bees, whose colony is made up of the Queen (who can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day in the summer), the male Drones (whose primary function is to mate with the queen) and the hardworking female Worker bees.

There are approx 2,000 worker bees in a hive during the winter months but as soon as temperatures begin to warm, the Queen Bee lays eggs at a rapid rate, resulting in the colony that can grow up to 50,000 in one hive by the height of summer.

Just like the story of Barry B. Benson, a new bee in the magical Disney film The Bee Movie, who finds out that each bee has their place in the colony, so it is in real life. Worker bees start life as Nurse bees for nine days looking after the new brood, then spend 12 days as House bees tidying and cleaning before become Guard Bees, who mind the entrance and keep intruders out. They in turn become foragers for about four weeks and usually die out in the field.

How Honey Bees Make Honey | greensideup.ieField work

While the bees are out and about they do several things, which include scouting for new food sources and foraging, they collect water as well as nectar (sugars), pollen (protein and vitamins) and propolis which is a kind of bee glue, that comes from sticky trees such as lime.

Nectar

Nectar is the bees fuel. As the forager bee visits the various flowers, she sucks it up and it’s stored in her honey stomach.  Different crops contain different elements that include fructose, glucose, sucrose, mixed with water and enzymes.

How Honey Bees Make HoneyNectar to honey

Nectar contains 60 – 80% water and the bees have to remove the water to make honey.

When the Forager bees return back to the hive, they pass the nectar they’ve collected to Receiver bees who drop it into storage cells on the frames. Honey has everything that was in the nectar but only 17% water. To remove the water, the Receiver bees roll the nectar up and down their proboscis until the water begins to evaporate. Bees fan their wings which removes moisture too until eventually, enough water is removed, the honey is ripe and the bees cap the honey in the cells with wax.

Honey bee feeds from a dandelion flower in springtime by greensideup.ie

Frame full of capped honey

How the Bees Wax is Made

When honey bees are around 12 to 20 days old they develop a gland in their abdomens that converts sugar from the honey into a waxy substance, flakes of which are deposited and collected by the other bees and chewed up in their mouths. This aids them in the construction of the hexagonal combs. Beekeepers usually provide a wax foundation on frames inside the hive for the bees to assist them with this. In the wild bees have to do it all, hence the combs non uniform shapes.

Honey bee feeds from a dandelion flower in springtime by greensideup.ieHarvesting the Honey

Following several weeks of checking each frame in the hive for pests, diseases and extra Queens, for Beekeepers August is honey harvesting month and there is great excitement at the prospect of collecting jars of liquid gold. When we started our beekeeping adventure, we weren’t really interested in the honey side of things, just keen to provide a home for honey bees. As the months have passed, our weekly work checking them increased, the expenses grew and the prospect of selling a few jars became more appealing… If we’d had to buy everything and weren’t given a hive and had a swarm move in, our costs to date would have reached about €700.

How Honey Bees Make Honey

Honey Being Spun In An Extractor

Frames Full of Honey

In the popular hives, the bottom section is known as the brood chamber. It’s where the eggs are laid and the young bees are hatched. There are honey stores in there too for them to feed upon. The second and subsequent sections are known as Supers and the Queen is excluded from these as Beekeepers don’t want eggs and young bees mixed up with the honey stores they plan to harvest. The Supers are where the frames of honey are created and it’s these frames we remove at harvesting time.

How Honey Bees Make HoneyCollecting the Honey

Once away from the hive, the wax capping is scraped from the frames using warm knives or special combs, then the frames are placed into large honey extractors where the honey is spun off them, collected into buckets, before being strained and poured into sterilised jars.

Pure Honey might seem an expensive purchase compared to jars you find cheaply in supermarkets that have often come from various blends and countries, but just look at the work involved. It took around two months for our one colony of around 30,000 bees to make 14, one pound jars of honey and we know that it’s been foraged within a five-mile radius of our house.

Research suggests that local honey is good for us and I’ve been scouring our local countryside looking for signs of farmers who spray their fields or verges with pesticides, hoping that our bees don’t find them. I’m relieved to find they seem to be very few in our rural location, but still sadly more than we’d like.

The Months Ahead

Our next challenge is to keep the bees alive for another year. We left them some frames with  honey on and will be feeding them a sugar syrup so they don’t starve over winter, having had their reserves taken from them. They also have time to forage for the next few weeks and when the sun shines will be out and about collecting nectar from the blackberries and ivy flowers. We’ll be checking them for the deadly varroa mite and then hoping the winter isn’t too harsh and they pull through it for another year.

Our beekeeping journey is just beginning but it’s given us a wonderful appreciation and fascination of these very special, industrious little insects and the world they live in and I’m glad we’ve started out on it.

If you’d like to read more stories about our beekeeping experience, as well as suggested plants for your garden or hedgerows, you can find them here. If you’re interested in keeping bees, the Federation of Irish Beekeepers Association has a list on their website.

12 Comments

  • Reply Naomi August 24, 2015 at 6:57 pm

    That is really exciting Dee, your first of many harvests I hope, I bet that your honey tastes amazing too. I hope the bees survive well over the winter.

    • Reply Dee Sewell August 24, 2015 at 7:40 pm

      The honey is delicious! And every morsel a precious taste explosion now we know the work that went into making it.

  • Reply flowerpowerlife August 24, 2015 at 7:30 pm

    Wow – lucky you – I bet it tastes amazing. Now I know more info, I look out for local honey from Cheshire and buy it.

    • Reply Dee Sewell August 24, 2015 at 7:41 pm

      It’s wonderful and glad to hear that you’ll be trying your own local honey now

  • Reply Amanda Webb August 26, 2015 at 8:30 am

    I’m always fascinated by how bees work, their ‘society’ (not sure if that’s the right word) is so regimented and clever. I’d be too scared of getting stung to keep bees but I’d still love the honey!

    Great video too 🙂

    • Reply Dee Sewell August 26, 2015 at 9:15 am

      Their colony is known as a super organism Amanda. They work so closely together and the queen sends out pheromones to keep them all in order. They are amazing creatures. Getting stung isn’t so nice. Received my first one on the eyebrow the other week and looked like I’d been punched. Like falling off a horse, I need to get back on it 🙂

  • Reply Lorna August 26, 2015 at 9:54 am

    It’s great to see so many people taking to bee keeping. I have to admit I haven’t as yet! It’s fascinating how it all works.
    All farmers have to go for training for 2 days for spraying now, time consuming and expensive. WE don’t do much spraying, spot spraying more so. Brian and Will spent two days recently, Will driving the tractor and Brian walking behind him spot spraying the docks – big job in a 27 acre field.

    • Reply Dee Sewell August 26, 2015 at 10:22 am

      I have to admit to being glad farmers have to train for spraying and hope the teachers explain why it’s so important they know how to do it correctly. It’s a shame it’s not the same for the general public. So many times I’ve seen householders spray with no thought or protection for themselves or those around them and countless studies have linked pesticides to Parkinson’s Disease. I just don’t understand why they spray their entire roadside boundaries as the grass and weeds grow back! I know it’s supposed to be less labour intensive than strimming but is it really worth it now studies are showing bees and pollinators suffer too. I know you’re not an organic farm Lorna and glad to hear your weeds are spot rather than blanket sprayed. Keeping bees might sway you to make the switch :)))

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  • Reply regula Ysewijn February 24, 2016 at 9:04 am

    How wonderful! It must be such a treat to see the magic happening. What a lucky break to have bees come to your hive all natural by themselves! I had no idea there is so much cost involved in keeping bees. Looking forward to more stories from the beehive and their carers 😉

    • Reply Dee Sewell February 25, 2016 at 8:40 pm

      It feels such a privilege Regula and a big responsibility! Hopefully we’ll manage to keep them alive this year. They were buzzing around in the sunshine yesterday.

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