Discover now the natural treasures of the bees!!
Honey, it is right to be considered as one of the nature miracles, as it is probably one of the most valuable ingredients that man has ever used in his cuisine and gastronomy.
A product that is full of health, great taste, vitamins, and many nutrients.
Some of the most delicious products that bees offer us are honey, royal jelly, propole, and pollen, products that are used daily by millions of consumers, both in food and in cosmetics.
Honey:
Honey is the main product we get from bees, a product as we mentioned above full of vitamins, minerals, and many nutrients.
It is considered as one of the oldest products that humans used in their daily life food, thanks to its nutritions and its great taste.
Honey is healthy, tasty, fills you with energy and you can create delicious dishes and sweets or snacks using it.
How honey is being produced?
Worker bees (which make up at least 98% of the hive population) are the ones that produce honey through a complex process.
To produce honey, a large number of worker bees is being required , and no bee can produce honey on its own without the other members of the group.
So the production of honey is as we understand a team process.
- To do this, some bees fly outside of the hive, looking for nectar in the flowers.
- They then suck the nectar from the flowers and store it in their second special stomach (specially designed to store honey) while flying back to the hive.
- Once they reach the hive, they deliver the nectar to another group of bees, who will "chew" it.
- The "chewing" bees collect the nectar and chew it for about 30 minutes.
- During this time, the enzymes convert the nectar into a substance that contains honey along with enough water.
- The worker bees then diffuse the substance they produced into honeycombs so that the water can evaporate and the honey becomes thicker and richer.
- The evaporation of water accelerates as other bees make air with their wings.
- Once the honey production is over, another group of bees is responsible for sealing the cells with wax, so that the product is protected.
Bees produce and store their products (honey, royal jelly, propolis, etc.) for their own use.
They can survive by eating honey during the winter and at other times when pollen is not available.
We can harvest honey in two ways:
Harvesting honeycomb or Exporting honey.
- Honeycomb is being harvested exactly as the bees produce it.
- The beekeeper harvests the honeycomb that is full of honey, by cutting it with a knife.
- All honeycomb with honey can be consumed as is. It is very tasty and nutritious.
But the classic way of harvesting honey is to extract it.
- Honey extraction is the process by which we harvest honey from honeycombs sealed with ripe-ready honey.
- First, we carefully select the frames that are ready for harvest.
- We remove the bees and move these frames to an indoor space where bees or other insects can never enter.
- Then use a special tool to carefully remove the candle from the frame.
- Next, we put our frames in the honey exporter.
The honey extractor is a device that uses centrifugal force and - as a result - pure honey from the frames then flows into our jars.
When is the honey being harvested:
Honey harvesting generally takes place during the summer and autumn months, always after the large nectar production of plants.
How bees are treated during harvest:
- Before we start removing the frames inside the hive, we must keep in mind that when harvesting honey, bees are very aggressive towards invaders.
- The strong smell and aromas make the bees even more aggressive.
- On that day, beekeepers always wear the full protection equipment (including gloves).
- We start by smoking the hive with a bee smoker and we do this to calm the bees.We can only put fir leaves in the smoker - nothing toxic.
- The smoker has been found to calm bees because it does not allow worker bees to quickly spread "alarm" pheromones, pheromones that state "we have an invader in our colony and we must attack."
- Thus, most bees are confused, do not receive the alarm message, and are therefore calm, allowing the beekeeper to inspect the hive or harvest honey without significant problems.
- Next, we shake the box in the cell so that the majority of the bees fly away.
- We drive away all the other bees with the beekeeping brush (which we may have wet with water first).
- Next, carefully place the frame in an empty cell and cover it.
- We do the same for all the frames that we have decided to export and transfer them to our interior (where the honey will be exported).
We can leave the frames in the empty hives for a few days before extracting the honey.
Now, one of the most famous honey varieties is pine, honey.
Pine honey is the ideal honey for those who love the forest, its oxygen, the sense of freedom that nature offers.
When you eat it you have the sense from the first bite that you are sitting with the people you love in a very beautiful green forest having a delicious breakfast under the morning sun.
It is characterized by a darker color, and a particularly rich aroma while its taste is not too sweet, ideal for those who don’t like very sweet flavors.
Pine honey is honey rich in nutritional value, with many minerals, trace elements, and many more nutrients. That’s why it’s perfect for breakfast to start your day full of energy.
Here it is worth noting that pine honey because it is honey with low glucose content, crystallizes much more slowly than other honeys, it remains fluid for a longer time.
Ideal honey to start your day full of energy, to enjoy a wonderful snack or to make delicious sweets with your family.
Propole:
It is a soft, flexible, sticky material containing basic resins and various juices, wax, essential oils, and pollen. Bees use propolis to spread the content of the hive, disinfect it, and close slits, and so on.
Honeycomb honey:
It is the honey that is offered to the consumer through the natural '' warehouse '' of the honeycomb, without being processed.
The honeycomb is removed from the beehive, cut into pieces, placed in transparent packaging, and consumed as it is. Chewing it, the honey comes out and in this way, we enjoy the wax and honey at the same time.
Beeswax:
It is produced by the waxed glands of the bees which are located in their belly; this is the basic material to build the honeycomb.
It is widely used in the manufacture of cosmetics, lamps, and candles, for ointments and patches, and to make varnishes and dyes.
There are thousands of reasons that you have to use honey and especially bees products, mainly because bee products are full of benefits for our organism.
And most of all we can create delicious foods and sweets using honey and bee products.
