Just the facts...

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live”.- Albert Einstein.

I thought I would share a few honey bee facts that help folks realize how amazing these little critters really are….

JUST THE FACTS

1.     Honey Bees are the only insect that produces food eaten by humans.

2.     Honey is the original “super-food”. It’s the only food that includes enzymes, vitamins, minerals, water, and pinocembrin (an antioxidant associated with improved brain function).

3.     Honey Bees’ wings beat 200 times per second and they can fly at 15 miles per hour.

4.     Each worker produces approximately 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in their lifetime.

5.     Foraging bees fly 55,000 miles to product one pound of honey.

6.     They are fuel efficient. It would take approximately 1 ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world one time.

7.     A single honey bee visits 50-100 flowers on each trip out.

8.      A colony of bees consists of 15,000 to 70,000 bees.

This little lady with the yellow dot is the queen!

9.     Worker bees live for only 6 weeks in the summer months as they literally work themselves to death.

10.                        Queen bees can live 4-5 years, but are most productive in their first 1-2 years.

11.                         A queen bee can lay up to 1500 eggs per day and she determines if she lays a fertilized egg (female worker bees) or an unfertilized egg (male done bee).

12.                        Drones (male bees) die after mating. L

13.                        Honey bees are not aggressive by nature, but getting stung does hurt. But, it would take 1100 stings to be fatal.

I don't suggest you try this, but this guy was not harmed by these gentle creatures!

14.                        Honey bee account for over 70% of all crop pollination.

 ~ Bobby

Honey Extracting

Extraction-

According to Merriam Webster, extraction is the act or process of getting something by pulling it out, forcing it out… In terms of honey, extraction it is simply how to separate sweet, luscious honey from its natural container, or comb.

There are two basic methods to extract honey. 

The first, and most rudimentary is the crush and strain method. This is exactly how it sounds. You simply take frames of honey, scrape them into a bucket, and mash them up. This will open up each individual cell containing honey. Then it’s poured through a strainer which separates the honey from the wax comb.

This is certainly the easiest way and the least expensive. All that is needed is a bucket, knife, and something equivalent to a potato masher. While this is done worldwide and while it’s simple enough, I don’t like it. Bees expend a huge amount of resources and energy to make comb. If the comb were saved, they could use this time making more honey instead of new comb. This is why I choose to use a honey extractor.

A honey extractor is also fairly simple. Using a knife, you cut off the very end caps of the honey comb, thus opening the cells. Then the frames of uncapped honey are placed in the extractor and spun around.  Through centrifugal force, the honey flies out of the honey comb, thus preserving the comb to be re-used.

The honey still needs to be strained to remove the wax cappings, but beyond that, it’s then ready to bottle.

While this isn’t the most fun or "sexiest" part of beekeeping, it is the final effort needed in order to dip you finger into a jar of sweet goodness!

~ Bobby