Episode 7 of my podcast is now up! You can check it out over on Podbean.
This week, I'm talking about the liquid gold that is honey! What is it? How is it made? Why do bees create this yummy liquid? How do we harvest it? And more!
Primary references for this episode are:
Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping, by Dewey M. Caron, & Lawrence John Connor
The Beekeeper’s Bible, by Stewart, Tabari, & Chang
What is honey?
Honey is a concentrated carbohydrate that requires no further digestion of its primary sugars (glucose and fructose), which makes it highly digestible. In contrast, sucrose (table sugar) and plant sugars (beet, agave, maple syrup, etc) must be converted into glucose and fructose before they can be absorbed, meaning they move further through your digestive tract and must be digested before absorption, making them far less energy efficient than honey.
Honey also contains its own preservatives, making it one of the most stable foods to store long term. Honey is derived from the raw ingredient: nectar.
What exactly is nectar?
Nectar is a thin liquid produced by plants that is comprised of water, sugars, plant pigments, vitamins, minerals, and aroma components. It contains roughly equal amounts of the sugars glucose and fructose, with small amounts of sucrose.
You might have heard of beekeepers talking about the ‘nectar flow’, or ‘honey flow’. This is the time of year (usually Spring through Summer) when plants are producing a bounty of nectar that the bees will harvest, turning it into delicious honey for their, and our, consumption.
There are a number of factors that impact the nectar flow and therefore our honey harvest:
Presence of nectar and pollen plants (i.e. those plants that produce these key items)
Weather that allows for nectar production and bee foraging (intense sunlight for long periods of time; adequate moisture but not too much rain; warm days and cool nights, etc)
Peak population of bees during the primary nectar flow period (weak colonies with low population during the flow will have fewer foragers and therefore have less nectar collected to convert into honey)
The health and therefore physical ability of the bees (sometimes referred to as ‘colony morale’)
So looking at this, it seems like what we, as beekeepers, can control (to some extent) is making sure we have a big, healthy hive ready for the nectar flow in Spring. Ideally, if we tested for varroa mites in Fall, treated as needed, left enough honey for our hives to eat over winter, and then were ready in early Spring to help them build up, we should be on track for a good honey harvest (weather permitting).
How do bees turn nectar into delicious honey?
The process goes like this: a forager returns to the hive, carrying nectar in her honey stomach. She meets a ‘hive bee’ at or near the entrance, and regurgitates the nectar into that bee’s mouth, who then stores it in her honey stomach. During this process, a small amount of moisture is lost.
The hive bee then seeks a quiet, dark place in the hive and starts to reduce the water content in the nectar through a process called ‘active evaporation’. She does this by regurgitating a tiny portion of the stored nectar and using it to blow a small bubble, which creates a large surface area for water to evaporate.
This bubble is then returned to her honey stomach and mixed with the remaining nectar and naturally produced enzymes before she repeats the process. A single bee will repeat this process over many minutes for one stomach load.
Worker bees produce 2 enzymes vital to this conversion process, which she secretes from her hypo pharyngeal glands. These enzymes are:
-INVERTASE, which breaks down sucrose into glucose and fructose
&
-GLUCOSE OXIDASE, which breaks down glucose into gluconic acid (the primary acid in honey), and hydrogen peroxide. Gluconic acid is responsible for honey’s low pH, which makes honey inhospitable to bacteria, mold, and fungi. Hydrogen peroxide is also antibacterial, and these two ingredients of honey make it able to be stored for long periods of time without breaking down or ‘going off’ (as we say in England).
So after this hive bee has been blowing bubbles with the nectar to decrease the moisture content, she then stores this newly ripening nectar (sometimes called ‘green’ honey) in the cells of the comb. She will actually hang droplets of the nectar to increase the surface area to allow more evaporation of water, a process called passive evaporation.
To give an idea of how much water needs to be evaporated, nectar can contain as much as 80% water, whereas honey contains less than 20% (17-19% is the normal range). Bees remove this water before storing because there are naturally occurring yeasts in honey that will cause it to ferment if too much water remains. By keeping the water content under 20%, honey will not ferment and will therefore stay good for long periods of time.
Once this much water has been evaporated, the honey is then capped with beeswax, and is exceptionally stable in this form. Honey in this form will last indefinitely and will not degrade. Pretty incredible!
The Honey Harvest
Honey harvesting often takes place late in the summer or early Fall. In areas with a Fall nectar flow (like here in Ohio), a beekeeper can potentially harvest in late Spring/early Summer, and again in mid to late Fall. Two harvests is rather exciting to this newbee!
The basic steps of honey harvesting are as follows:
removal of honey supers/frames
removal of wax cappings, allowing the honey to be extracted
extracting the honey!
cutting comb into sections for cut-comb or chunk honey
processing liquid honey
processing beeswax
cleaning and storing extracted frames
handling bulk honey/jarring/preparing to sell or gift
Removing supers is pretty self-explanatory but how do we know when to remove the super? The general rule seems to be waiting until ¾ of all cells are capped. You also want to be on the look out for brood in your honey supers. If you extract a frame with brood on it, apparently it makes your honey taste gross! I can see that. I mean, who wants pulverized baby bees in their honey? Yuck!
So you see the above and go to remove your super(s) but they’re crawling with bees! Now what?
From what I have read, there are 4 main methods of removing bees from your honey frames before extraction:
1/ ‘Bounce and Brush’: as it sounds! You gently bounce each frame to dislodge the bees and brush away the stragglers. The key with this method is not to use such force that you break the frames, and not to bounce them against the hive itself as this will rile up all your girls (and they might be mad already depending on the time of year). You can bounce the frame by the front entrance so the girls can make their way back inside.
2/ Bee Escapes: these are metal or plastic devices that fit in the hole of the inner cover. They are designed to allow bees down but not up so you place them between the brood boxes and the honey supers you with to extract. The bees will move down at night to cluster around the brood and the queen, and will then be unable to get back to the honey supers, leaving them clear for you to take.
Something called a ‘triangle board’ works in the same way, and is something I’ve seen in a number of stores and bee catelogues.
The only downside with the above is that if the nights are warm, the bees might not move down into the brood boxes. Still worth trying, though!
3/ Fume boards: these are a special, absorbent board that you add a repellent to. The heat of the day causes it to evaporate and the bees flee from it! Since these are temperature sensitive, they work best on warm days so are great for a summer harvest.
4/ Forced air: basically a bee blower! Literally blows the bees off the frames. The trick is making sure it is strong enough to remove the bees but not so strong that it harms them or the capped honey.
Extracting Honey
You want to work in a warm environment, whether that’s a room in your house, a greenhouse, shed, or dedicated honey house. The ideal temp is about 90F/32C. You want to keep the humidity below 50% to avoid water getting into your honey. It’s also recommended that you place a fan in such a place as to keep the air circulating around the room.
First, you need to remove the wax cappings. This can be done in a variety of ways. I’ve seen special ‘scratchers’, heated knives, things that look like modified cheese graters, and even huge commercial machines that uncap multiple frames at once.
As you remove the wax, you want to do so over some kind of container in order to save the cappings. Beeswax is a commodity in itself! I’ll talk a little more about processing wax later.
There are two main ways to extract honey (from what I have read):
1/ extracting using a machine
2/ crushing and straining.
It seems like many people use a machine to extract their honey. These machines use centrifugal force to literally fling the honey from the cells. You can use a ‘tangential extractor’ or a ‘radial extractor’.
In a TANGENTIAL extractor, the frames are positioned so the face of the comb is at a right angle to the central spindle. Rotations cause honey in the outer face to be partially extracted. You then turn the frame so the other side of the frame faces out, and repeat the process. Each frame will need multiple rotations to fully extract the honey. With this method, you must be careful that the machine does not rotate too fast as this can damage the honeycomb.
In a RADIAL extractor, frames are positioned so they radiate out from the center with the top bars facing out, and bottom bars facing the center. The general appearance is that of spokes on a wheel!
Honey is extracted from both sides as the frames are spun, saving you time. The frames are also held straight and securely so there’s a decreased risk of comb breakage.
If a machine is just not feasible for you to purchase or make yourself, you can crush and strain your comb to extract the honey. If you have foundationless frames, you simply cut the whole comb out, crush it, and then strain it through some kind of sieve. You can also crush, wrap it in a fine cloth, and hang the bag, allowing honey to slowly seep out into a waiting container.
If you use foundation, you would scrape the comb off the plastic foundation into your container of choice.
For those of you who use foundationless frames, you have an additional option for honey extraction: cut comb.
Since you have beautiful, pure beeswax, you can simply cut your comb into sections to fit inside your chosen container (usually glass jars). Place the comb onto a fine screen, cut into desired sections, and allow the honey to drain for a day or so before packaging. Place the comb first and then fill your container with the liquid honey.
The Honey Bee Suite website has a great guide (complete with video) to harvesting cut comb honey.
The downside to these ‘whole comb’ methods is that you’re destroying (or removing) those beautiful beeswax cells, meaning your bees need to make new wax for these frames when they’re given back to the colony. Wax creation is a lot of work for your girls and they need time to do it. To maximize your honey harvest year after year, having pre-built comb is essential so you might want to avoid this way of doing things if you’re all about getting as much honey as quickly as possible each year.
So let’s step back to liquid honey extraction, whether through use of a machine or crushing and straining. You have all this deliciousness. What next?
The next step is to strain the honey, removing any impurities like small chunks of wax, and general debris from the hive. You can use a single, fine strainer, or a double strainer, which has a coarse filter placed over a fine filter.
You filter the honey into a settling tank. This is basically any container (usually stainless steel or food grade plastic tub) that the honey can be safely stored in before it’s bottled. You let your honey sit in this tank for a day or so, which allows any remaining beeswax or bubbles to float to the top. You can then remove them by scooping them out.
Many of these tanks come with a spigot so you can drain your honey directly from them. Some are even heated, keeping your honey at the optimal temperature to avoid crystallization and facilitate easy honey flow without removing the nutrients that make honey so delicious and unique!
When you begin to bottle your honey, I read that you should drain a little honey first to make sure it is bubble free. Keep bottling up your honey after this until you see bubbles begin to form. At this point, stop, and let your honey settle again. The goal is to make your honey as bubble free as possible!
If you run the honey down the side of your jars as you bottle, this is also supposed to decrease air build up.
What do you do with all those beeswax cappings that you scraped off to get to the sweet, sweet honey?
Beeswax is a valuable commodity and it would be a shame to waste it! Your bees worked very hard to produce all that wax, and you can use it in a variety of ways.
To start processing your beeswax, collect it all in a container that will allow any remaining honey to drain from the wax into a catching pan or tub below. You don’t want to waste any of that liquid gold!
You could also set out the cappings for your bees to clean but be mindful of robbing.
After the honey has drained (or your bees have licked the cappings clean!), you can then rinse your wax cappings using fresh, cool water. Do not do this in your sink! I’ve seen some horror stories where people accidentally plugged up their drains!! After your cappings are clean, you want to melt them down, which allows debris and other impurities to separate from the wax and be removed.
There are a few ways to melt/render wax; in an electric wax melter, in a solar melter, in water, or in a double boiler. Regardless of what method you choose, the key is to be careful never to overheat beeswax as it is highly flammable, and wax fires are very hard to put out, making them dangerous. Please always be careful!
You can pour your melted wax into various molds or containers for storage. Beeswax can be used in body care products (like creams, lotions, lipbalm, etc), as well as made into beautiful candles. You have a lot of options! You can even sell it, or enter a local competition (yes, there are competitions that judge the quality and beauty of your beeswax!).
For a really great article on the whole process, check out Carolina Honey Bees! There’s even a link to instructions on making your own solar melter.
*
And that’s pretty much it! Well, it’s an overview of the whole process. I’m sure there’s some things I have missed, or perhaps have to experience to fully understand! I am optimistically hoping for a harvest, even a tiny one, next year.
If you’re a first year beekeeper like myself, you may or may not have harvested honey this year. If you didn’t, you are not alone! I didn’t either, due to a mixture of bee drama (#beedrama!) and being paranoid about leaving enough honey for my girls to overwinter.
If you did, that is awesome!! I hope you are savouring every spoonful of all that hard work that you and your bees put into that liquid gold. Please send me an email or leave a comment about how your first harvest went. I’d love to hear from you!
One small aside before I go: I’ve been reading a book called Robbing the Bees by Holly Bishop, and it’s wonderful. It’s both a history of honey and an account of her time following a commercial honey farmer in Florida, and keeping her own bees. The author has put so much research into the extremely long history of honey, and I am just delighted by the facts she has unearthed. I recommend checking it out, if you can!
Until next time, remember: hug your hens, and then wash your hands!