Beekeeper’s Notes August 2015

Published on: 1 Aug, 2015
Updated on: 24 Jul, 2015

So Much Owed To So Many By So Few

In the latest in a series of Hugh Coakley’s Beekeeper’s Notes, he writes about harvesting honey.

It’s about now when beekeepers around the country are harvesting honey from their colonies. It is also the time when I marvel about how productive the bee is and how much we owe this efficient, gentle, wondrous creature.

The queen is not laying quite as many eggs now, the peak laying period being around June. The adult bee population though is at its absolute peak. So the hive is at its strongest and there is plenty of nectar around. The bees are working their hardest in our gardens and fields to bring in the sugary syrup from the flowers. And they collect far more than they will need to get them through the winter. It is this surplus, this wonderful abundance that gives us the perfect bounty that is honey.

Busy hive entrance with bees arriving and leaving like an overexcited Heathrow Airport.

The way bees convert nectar to honey is a marvel in itself. The bees pass it between each other concentrating it while they do so. They add enzymes to convert the sucrose in the nectar into glucose and fructose. They then store it in the comb, the wax creation that they have made with such precision, and they fan it to evaporate the water content. It is transformed from 80% water and 20% sugar to a super-saturated 20% water and 80% sugar.

Once it is ready, they cover it with a thin film of wax and it is ready, ready for storing or ready for the beekeeper.

A frame of wax comb filled with honey and capped with a thin wax film. Each full frame holds about 2lbs of honey.

The next bit is simple if a bit sticky.

The beekeeper removes the spare honey from the hive, slices off the thin wax coating and spins the honey out in a centrifugal extractor.

Taking the wax coating off and exposing the golden honey within.

I hire the extractor from our club, Guildford Beekeepers Association. It is manual so plenty of exercise.

Spinning the honey off in the centrifugal extractor.

It gets strained through a stainless steel filter and decanted straight into jars. Very pure, very natural.

Each jar lovingly filled!

So, when you buy honey from small, local beekeepers, you can be confident that there are no additives or modifications. It is simply as the bee has made it, just pure honey. I can’t think of a more natural product.

It takes about 500 bees to make a jar of honey. To paraphrase Churchill but without doing the voice: “Never in the history of human striving has so much been owed to so many (bees) by so few (humans).”

The fruit of our labours (the bees and me) all from my hives.

PS: Last month, I talked about my friend’s hive which had Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus. Positive ending to the story. His hive is recovering, so good news. I’ll keep you posted if I hear any more.

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