First Harvest

I've taken the rolled eyes and not-so-subtle mocking of my 'gentlewoman farmer' beekeeping up until now.  But I think I've jumped the hurtle into legitimacy now that my first year's honey harvest is in!  I got two gallons of rich dark (blackberry influenced I'm told) sweet syrup from my little one-hive colony.  I will own-up to being a hobby beekeeper, but a beekeeper I am.   

If properly stored and uncontaminated, honey will last indefinitely. The oldest jar ever found is believed to be 5500 years old.  Thanks to chemistry and the magical handiwork of bees (they have special enzymes that inhibit bacterial growth), its low water content and high acidity, it’s tough for bacteria and mold to live in honey.  

 

Sometimes honey will crystallize.  It’s actually a sign that you have raw, pure, good-quality honey.  It’s still edible in the crystalline state.  Keeping the container tightly sealed will help avoid the change in consistency.  But if it hardens, placing the jar it in a bowl of warm water and a stir will bring it back to its liquid form.  As long as honey is properly sealed and stored in a dry place, it should last forever.

Keeping bees has been fun and educational.  I always had a remote interest in the life of bees--they're so organized and industrious, and make those perfect hexagonal honeycombs.  But I appreciate them even more now.  Each bee has a specific job and purpose in life that they know innately upon birth, and they never shrug their duties. 

The QUEEN determines the success or failure of the colony.  She leaves the hive only once, as a virgin queen to mate.  She comes back with over 100 million sperm.  She lays eggs (up to 2,000 per day), determining the gender as she lays (males from unfertilized eggs, females from fertilized).  As she gets older (2-4 years) the fertility of her eggs diminishes.  In nature the worker bees will ball up around her so she overheats and dies, then nurture a new queen.  In beekeeping, she is replaced.  

The DRONES' (males) sole purpose is to spread the genetics of the colony by mating with a virgin queen from another hive.  If he is successful, he dies immediately.  If he is unsuccessful and lives through the season, he will get evicted from the hive as cool weather arrives, so that he doesn't deplete the winter food resources.

The WORKER BEES (sterile females) do everything else!  They feed and nurse the young, do all the foraging, produce and store the honey and wax, keep the hive clean, and defend the hive against intruders.  They have different jobs depending on their age and in which season they're born.  The summertime variety have huge amounts of work to get done and often live only six weeks.  Those born in late fall or winter spend the cold months huddled in a group within the hive--to keep the hive and queen warm and alive until spring--and may live five months.

And as far as those beautifully geometric honeycombs, worker bees must consume vast amounts of honey for the energy to create wax.  When the temperature is right, they secrete wax scales from special glands in their body. Then they chew the wax with a bit of honey and pollen to produce the beeswax. The bees initially make each hole as a circular tube, molded by the shape of their bodies.  The heat created by the activity of the worker bees softens the wax to a molten stage, which creeps between the triple junctions of neighboring circular cells.  Once the wax starts flowing, the cell walls naturally fall flat and take on the shape of a hexagon, like adjoining bubbles in a bath.  This takes place in a matter of seconds.

In the next couple weeks I'll have to begin to make and feed my hive sugar water weekly throughout the winter.  Because this is not a bee colony in nature (where no one is stealing their honey) they won't have enough stored to get them through the cooler weather.  The sugar water is a replacement for the flower nectar that will be scarce until late spring.  This is a more than fair price for the honey I receive.

• According to the international conservation nonprofit Earthwatch Institute, bees are the most important species on earth. The declaration was made July, 2023 at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society of London.  According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), three out of four crops that produce fruit or seeds for human consumption depend, at least in part, on pollinators. While pollinators also include bats and birds, insects such as bees, butterflies, and hoverflies are the most common. Pollinators support the production of 87% of leading food crops worldwide.
•       The End