A small photo story about how honey is extracted from honeycombs. In a young apiary (the first season is in effect), novice beekeepers recently got the first honey this year. Seventy kilograms. A little, but for the first time it's ok. Everything went well. The bees, of course, curled and buzzed around, but they stung only a couple of times. Now they have to refill the cells that were returned to them after the "pumping out". The work of a beekeeper only at first glance seems relatively "not dusty": put on a protective suit and go check the hives for yourself. 
In fact, you need to know and be able to do a lot. 
You need a lot of frames: firstly, the bees swarm and they need to be caught and transplanted into new hives (fortunately, the swarming period has already ended); secondly, the frames must be replaced as they are filled with honey. So a part is made in reserve. 
A thin wire is stretched over the frames, on which wax is fixed. 
One plate is attached to each frame. 
Fastened with a special tool. Such a roller on the handle, which is kept in boiling water. The foundation is placed under the wire, the hot roller rides along the wire and sticks the foundation, melting it. 
Some hives are completed with one more floor. New frames are inserted there. 
Not all frames can be taken. It is considered normal if a third of the cells and more are sealed, the honey is ready. Therefore, some frames were immediately returned to the hives for "revision" 
And the frames are not enough for these bees. They built honeycombs outside. 
Sometimes you can see young bees emerging from the combs. They only have enough strength to gnaw through the “lid” of the honeycomb. For several days, other bees feed her, after which she crawls out completely, gaining strength. 
What is cut off is called “zabrus”. We can say that it is a mixture of honey, wax and bee enzymes. A very valuable item. It is valued ten times more expensive than honey. They say it helps a lot with colds in winter. 
You need to rotate the frames correctly. Slowly at first, then full force. Frames are rotated 180 degrees. 
In the foreground - knives for zabrus. In the back are beekeepers and a honey extractor. 
And here it is - a longed-for moment. The faucet opens and honey flows to the filter. 
And this is what "honey lava" looks like inside the honey extractor itself.
Even a person who is indifferent to sweets, understanding the benefits of honey, occasionally buys himself a jar to recharge his energy and improve his body. But few people know that there is another variety of this amazingly useful product. This is honey from wild bees. Yes, yes, this is exactly the dessert that all bears love so much.
Wild honey why is it wild
Wild bees are very different from domesticated ones that live in bee apiaries. They live in forest tree hives, which are called boards. Such boards are located far from various industrial facilities, roads.
Did you know? Another name for wild bee honey is bee honey.
The diet of forest bees consists exclusively of natural substances, excluding various artificial additives that beekeepers often add to their pets. As the name implies, wild honey is so named because it is produced by wild bees. The price of wild honey is much higher than usual, because:
- wild honey is more difficult to extract;
- it is collected in limited quantities;
- its benefits are much higher than those of ordinary honey.
Useful properties of wild honey, and how to take it
Bort honey owes its popularity to substances beneficial features which are much higher than usual. Because of the environmentally friendly and natural ingredients, wild honey is often used for medicinal purposes.
Useful properties of wild honey
This unusual natural delicacy has a beneficial effect on the human body. The positive effect is:
Wild bee honey is used for its beneficial properties to fight flu and colds. This natural medicine helps to relieve sore throat, alleviates the general condition of the patient. The whole spectrum useful substances honey replenishes the human body with the necessary vitamins and minerals. Important! When wild honey comes into contact with metal, all its beneficial properties are lost.
When to Take Miracle Honey
Wild honey is a valuable product, and it is important to know how it is useful. Boron honey will be an invaluable helper for such diseases as:
- cardiovascular diseases;
- disturbances in the work of the gallbladder, kidneys and liver;
- in problems related to urology and gynecology;
- wild honey has a positive effect on cancer;
- in case of problems with the gastrointestinal tract and metabolism.
How to take, features of the use of on-board honey
You can take wild honey, knowing its beneficial properties, in different ways, it all depends on the reason for taking it. If you just love this kind of honey, then there are no special rules, just eat and enjoy. If you are taking honey to get rid of an ailment, then you need to adhere to some techniques. So, for example, in case of a cold, it is recommended to prepare an infusion of herbs with the addition of wild honey to it. This infusion is diluted with one tablespoon in a glass of water and drunk before bedtime. If you have a problem with the nasopharynx, then dissolve one teaspoon of this honey. In case of problems with the gastrointestinal tract, it is recommended to take a spoonful of honey on an empty stomach.
Onboard honey is an expensive pleasure. Quite often, dishonest entrepreneurs try to sell ordinary honey under the guise of wild honey. Therefore, when you are going to buy wild honey, it is important to know what it is. A real forest delicacy has the following features:
If, when buying wild-caught honey, you find that it has a liquid consistency and is similar in smell to ordinary homemade honey, be sure that this is ordinary honey, and not a real delicacy of bears. Naturally, the most reliable way to check the authenticity of honey is to call on the help of an experienced beekeeper.
How to get field honey yourself, and what you need for this
The collection of honey from wild bees is carried out directly from the hollow in which they live. This process has been named "beekeeping". Wild bees, unlike their domesticated relatives, are particularly aggressive. When contemplating harvesting wild honey, it is important to be careful.
Did you know? Bort is a hollow in which wild bees settled.
Equipment and tools
To get wild honey, beekeepers simply smoke out bees, suffocating their dwelling. It is better to dress in clothes specially designed for beekeepers, in which you will not be bitten.
The process of extracting wild honey
Onboard beekeepers themselves create habitats for bees. They hollow out a hollow in some tree at a height of about 5 m. The boards are placed at a distance of several meters to several kilometers. A wild bee honey extractor smokes a swarm from the side, then collects a valuable product by hand. The seized honeycombs cannot be inserted into the frame honey extractor, so he also has to squeeze the honey manually. Having taken the combs from one hive, he goes to another, moving on a horse or on foot.
Honey is a natural product, which contains many healing vitamins. It has an original, unique taste and wonderful smell. Every child knows this delicacy. Due to the qualities of honey, a person widely uses it not only as a separate product, but also as a basis for the manufacture of medicinal compounds with other products. How is honey produced? Making honey- a unique process is long and laborious. honey bee- one of the most important insects on earth. Thanks to her, a person has a unique healing product - honey.
honeycombs- these are cells that are designed to store honey and raise offspring.
They are hexagonal in shape. This provides the greatest capacity at the lowest cost of building materials.
Cells differ in size depending on their purpose:
- bee- are used to hatch brood and store honey and bee bread. The width of these cells is from 5.37 to 5.42, the depth is from 11 mm to 12 mm;
- drone the cells are larger in size, as they are intended for growing drones;
- for large uterine cells are intended;
- honey cells are located at the top and along the edges of the cells. They have a greater slope and greater depth.
What do bees make honeycombs from?
. At the first stages of creation, they have a light yellow color, however, in the future, depending on the purpose of the cells, the color changes. Brood growing combs become dark. The material for building honeycombs is wax, created by the bees themselves. The main advantage of wax is that in a softened state it can be given the desired shape, which, when hardened, does not differ in brittleness and fragility.
Beeswax is durable and hygienic. It is not affected by microorganisms and the environment.
- 1. Collection of nectar
- 2. Honey production process
- 3. Purpose of honey production
Honey collection is the main occupation of honey bees. All efforts of the nest are aimed at collecting and preparing honey products. Individual members of the family have different functions, however, their common goal is honey.
The duties of the bee colony are as follows:
- exploration of new sources of pollen and nectar;
- extraction of honey and its transportation to the hive;
- wax production and construction of honeycombs - reservoirs for honey mass;
- “packaging” of honey into cells of honeycombs;
- the creation by the uterus of new members of the bee family for the future honey collection;
- defense of honey reserves, brood and uterus.
In short, the proper performance of these duties is the key to the well-being of the whole family. Only one fundamental question remained unanswered: how do bees make honey? We will try to answer it in this article.
Collection of nectar
The whole process of making honey begins with the collection of nectar. As soon as the air warms up to 12 degrees, insects wake up from hibernation and start their first cleansing flights, getting rid of fecal accumulations accumulated during the cold. Since the bees only make honey when the first honey plants bloom, the winged workers have plenty of time to prepare for the honey season (cleaning the hive, checking the combs and frames).
The fact that the flowers have blossomed, the colony learns from the scouts, who are exclusively engaged in patrolling the territory in search of meadows with flowers. As soon as they find them, they announce this to the whole family with the help of a special signal dance. A swarm of miners gets excited and prepares to fly to the facility. Guided by a scout, the bees fly to the place of honey collection and begin to extract nectar and pollen.
How bees collect nectar
Nectar is a translucent sweet substance secreted by a flower. The insect, wielding a long tubular proboscis, sucks it out, after which it enters a special honey ventricle (a bee has 2 stomachs: one for its own nutrition, and the other for collecting nectar). To fill the stomach to the top (its capacity is 70 mg, which is similar to the weight of the bee itself), you need to visit at least one and a half thousand flowers. Having filled it, the insect flies home, where the worker bees-receiving workers are waiting for it, which suck this sweetness out of the mouth of the getter with their proboscises.
honey production process
The nectar received from the miners is distributed by worker bees: one part of it goes to feed the larvae, and the other part goes to honey.
The way bees make honey is a complex, one-of-a-kind process. Therefore, it is important to highlight all the stages of such production:
- first, the worker insects chew the nectar for a long time and thoroughly. At this time, it is actively fermented. Sugar breaks down into glucose and fructose, making the whole substance more digestible. In addition, bee saliva has a bactericidal effect, disinfects nectar, and honey obtained from it is stored longer;
- ready and chewed sweetness is laid out in pre-prepared honeycombs. Cells are filled approximately 2-thirds;
- now the most important task is to accelerate the evaporation of excess moisture. To do this, insects actively flap their wings, raising the temperature in the hive. Gradually, the moisture evaporates and a viscous syrup is formed, consisting already of 75-80% of glucose and fructose, and only 5% of sucrose (such a percentage of sugars in honey is due to its easy digestibility);
- cells with honey are hermetically sealed with wax stoppers and left to ripen. Corks with wax also contain bee saliva enzymes, which additionally disinfects the cell and prevents liquefaction and fermentation of the finished product.
honey production process
During the honey collection season, the family is able to produce up to 200 kg of product.
Purpose of honey production
After all the main points of honey production have been covered, it is worth identifying its purpose - why bees need honey.
The main goal of the honey collection, its meaning laid down by nature, is a supply of food for itself and the larvae for the winter. A good supply of food is the key to a normal wintering. If the bee colony starves, it will die, or in the spring it will be so weakened that it will not be able to participate in the summer honey collection.
Thus, the answer to the question of why bees make honey is obvious: in order to maintain a normal level of vital activity, replenishing their energy reserves whenever they are depleted by any kind of hive work (defense from intruders, fanning nectar in order to remove it from excess moisture, cleaning, feeding larvae, etc.).
Insects kept in the apiary produce much more honey than they need to feed. This is due to the fact that the beekeeper additionally stimulates them to collect a sweet product, regularly removing honeycombs from the hives. And the bees, believing that the reserves are not enough for the winter, are constantly stocking up.
Tom was pumping honey today. I thought you might be interested in the process of extracting it from the honeycombs. So I photographed the highlights.
And so, at first it is necessary to take away these honeycombs from bees. Naturally, they will not give them up voluntarily. And if you do not apply a technique that has been tested for centuries, fumigation with smoke will sting. And this, for some, is fraught with complications. So for an ordinary person, the average, fifty bee stings is a lethal dose.
Some tolerate them quite easily, for others, even one bite can cause a painful condition.
In general, the bee sting itself is unpleasant. And that's putting it mildly. After a bite, if you do not immediately remove the sting, a local edema appears. The value of which depends on the properties of your body. So, for example, according to my gardener, his body begins to react, that is, the first signs of swelling appear, only after fifty bites. Well, that's understandable. He works with bees and antibodies have accumulated in his body, the body is used to bee venom. But my nanny, Marta, already from one to go to bed. She has a fever, her body swells, and she feels very unwell.
In passing, I will inform you that the most effective medicine, in this case, is diphenhydramine.
But, back to the apiary. In order to avoid trouble, people have been using smoke since time immemorial. Why does it have such an effect on bees?
What would you do in case of fire? I'm thinking of moving property. And if this is impossible to do and it is clear that the house, one way or another, will burn down? Try to capture all the most valuable things that you can carry away. This is exactly what bees do. At the first sign of a fire, they try to save the most valuable thing in the hive - honey. And since they don’t have any container for its transportation, they immediately begin to swallow it as much as they can.
Now imagine if you could bite a friend or foe if you had a mouthful of honey? The comparison, of course, is very rough, but it clearly shows the mechanism of action of smoke. And explaining why fumigated bees are not so aggressive. By the way, swarm bees, that is, those that flew out of the nest and formed a swarm, are also peaceful and are not inclined to use a sting. For the same reason. Flying away from the nest, they take a supply of food with them on the road, in the form of honey, swallowing it.
An interesting attraction is built on this, when people allow themselves to be surrounded by a swarm of bees. 
First, and most importantly, the people doing this trick are beekeepers. Their body, accustomed to poison. They know how to behave in such a situation. And you need to be extremely calm, do not twitch, do not make sudden movements. The body should not exude sharp, unpleasant odors. And it is best to rub with mint. Secondly, these are swarm bees, more calm. The reason for their friendliness I have indicated above. To make a swarm sit on a person, you need to hide the uterus on the body. Or, in a more barbaric way, crush this uterus and smear a part of her body. The bees will flock to the scent.
But I digress again. And so, in order to take away honey from bees, smoke is used. It, in our time, is obtained using a device called smoker.
It consists of a container in which combustible material smolders. One that emits a lot of smoke. Rotten wood, rags (Cotton is best), you can use cotton wool, straw, dry leaves, and the like. And small bellows fanning the flames. With their help, puffs of smoke are released from the smoker's nose.
Having smoked the hive, the beekeeper can safely remove the frames. View them. And, if you need to take honey for pumping. Smoke is very effective. But, here too, extreme caution and care is needed. And here you need to work smoothly, slowly and very carefully. God forbid crush at least one bee, the mistresses of the hive, smelling the smell of a crushed sister, instantly become indignant.
For pumping, frames are taken that the bees have already sealed at least half. In this case, there is a full guarantee that the honey is ready, ripe.
In the photo you see almost completely sealed honeycomb. Honey glistens in unopened cells. Multi-colored cells, this is perga. That is, pollen mixed with honey and rammed. At the very bottom, several closed drone cells. Drones are about to emerge from them.
The removed honeycombs are put in such a box, for transfer to a working house.
And since each honeycomb contains up to four kilograms of honey, the box turns out to be weighty.
This one pulled twenty-eight kilograms.
In the working house there is already a ready-made honey extractor, Knives are heated in hot water. To make it easier to work. The melting point of wax is sixty degrees.
Before you pump out honey, you need to unpack the honeycomb. Take off the wax caps. That's what they do with this knife.
And having removed, they place the honeycomb in the frame of the honey extractor.
Honey extractor, this is the same centrifuge. During rotation, honey is ejected from the cells under the action of centrifugal force and flows to the bottom.
The rotor of the honey extractor begins to rotate at a low speed. Because honey, located on the inner side of the honeycomb, under the action of the same force, presses on the honeycomb itself, on the bottom of the cells. And having no way out, it can break them.
Having twisted a little at low speed, and having pumped out part of the honey, the combs are turned over. After that, the rotation speed can be increased to the maximum.
However, even here it is not possible to completely pump out honey. The walls of the cells remain dirty with them.
No problem. After returning to the hive, the bees will carefully lick it, repair it. And only after that they will start to operate.
And the pumped out honey is collected at the bottom of the honey extractor and then, through the opening tap, flows into the sieve.
It must, be sure to strain. Since it also comes across pieces of wax, pollen particles, bee larvae and fragments of their bodies.
Primary straining allows you to get rid of all this. Gender at least eighty percent.
Empty frames fall into the same beekeeper's box. In which they are carried around the apiary and returned to the hive.
And honey, having passed the purification process, enters the jars.
It can be cleaned even better. Letting it stand for a day or two. All foreign particles (they are often lighter than honey) float to the surface. And they are easy to remove by removing the surface layer with a spoon. And then, straining through a finer sieve. But we don't. Since after the first cleaning it remains, mostly pollen and very small pieces of wax. And it is absolutely neutral for the body.
That's all. The honey pump is complete.
Finally, I want to show the moment of the birth of drones. Who were born right in front of my eyes.
The first picture shows how the drones, having gnawed through the lid, are trying to get out of the cradle.
On the second, one of them succeeded.
