Honey Bees 

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The bees are crucial for our planet they pollinate the plants and work incredibility hard to produce the honey that we have on our breakfast.

 

Did you know that the colony is mainly full of female bees? This sisterhood is crucial for the survival of the hive-mind; in a way the Queen is the prisoner of the colony. The virgin queen mates on the wing with a few drones, after which she will return safely back to the hive. She never leaves the hive, until she is either too old and is pushed out with a swarm or She gets superseded by a younger more productive Queen.  A good Queen lays around 2000 eggs a day, in the spring to summer period.  She is tended to and fed by the nursing bees and the flying bees bring back nectar and pollen to feed the whole colony. They use the nectar and pollen to give them energy to produce, wax which they produce from their wax glands.  The wax is made into perfect hexagonal combs which they fill t with their stores of honey for the good of the whole colony.  It’s so amazing to see this in action.  The honey we have on our breakfast; is stored in special boxes above the brood chamber and they are called supers.  When the honey has been fanned, enough to evaporate the water content and the honey is ripe, the bees then seal the honey with a thin film of wax.  The beekeeper then is able to take off the ripe honey at the end of the summer season.  The honey is extracted with a centrifugal extractor and filtered and then bottled.

 

The population increases considerably by June/ July and then starts to decrease around end August/September when she starts laying the winter bees, which will survive through the winter.  She will start to lay again around January and then the whole cycle begins again.

 

The life cycle of the honeybee is around 6 weeks from egg to flight to death on the wing.  What a sacrifices these amazing creatures do for the world.

The winter bees reduce to around 10,000 bees but in mid June/July thre should be about 60,000 bees per hive.

 

If you want to discover more about bees go to the www.BBKA.org website.

 

All the honey produced are extracted and bottled almost immediately and is pure and raw.   No heat treatment to or sugar to increase yield.  From hive to the jar with the help of a few million bees.