Month: September 2019

We usually associate September with falling leaves, bustling classrooms and the return of anything pumpkin-spiced. But did you know that September is National Honey Month?

2019 marks the 20^th year since the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Honey Board teamed up to give honey – and the bees that make it – some well-deserved praise. The month of September was chosen because that’s when most of the nation’s honey is harvested.

For thousands of years, honey has been valued for its sweetness as well as its medicinal use. Ancient Egyptians described beekeeping in hieroglyphs as early as 2400 BC. Greek and Roman scholars wrote about bees and athletes believed that honey improved their performance. Honey was used as a form of currency throughout Europe around 1000 AD.

A natural antiseptic with antibacterial properties, honey prohibits the growth of bacteria. Studies show that it can help heal burns, fight infections, reduce duration of diarrhea and relieve cough and cold symptoms. Some people buy honey produced by bees in their area to lessen their seasonal allergies (one of my customers swears by his daily dose of honey).

Honey is a solution of two simple sugars: glucose (dextrose) and fructose (levulose). Honey does not occur naturally – it comes from nectar, a sugary plant solution high in moisture, that is collected and converted by bees into honey.

To make honey, bees add enzymes their bodies produce to the nectar and evaporate excess moisture during the process. They also fan their wings to move air throughout the hive to create the best conditions for making and storing honey in their wax combs. When the solution reaches a certain level of dryness (about 18 percent moisture), bees seal each cell of honey with a thin layer of wax from glands on the underside of their abdomen. In this state, honey will keep indefinitely.

In short, honey making is a LOT of work for bees. In their short lifetimes, a single bee will produce only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. One pound of honey requires nectar from approximately two million flowers!

Honey contains other elements that occur naturally in flower nectar including minerals, vitamins, acids, pigments, enzymes and aroma components. The taste, color and smell of honey is based on the type of flower nectar used by the bees. Common flower sources are clover, orange blossom, blackberry and buckwheat. Most honey is sold as a wildflower mix, which is what our bees produce since we have no large fields of alfalfa, orange trees or buckwheat for them to visit.

Now that I’ve got your mouth watering, let’s celebrate National Honey Month!

It just so happens that I, too, have harvested and bottled our bees’ honey and it’s ready for hungry people! If you’re in the Ames and Story County area, send me a note on Facebook and we’ll get some to you. I also ship honey but it’s quite expensive because honey is much heavier than water.

It’s been fun to have enough honey to share with others. I like honey best when it’s in a glass jar, so I have re-purposed Ball canning jars as honey containers. Each jar holds about 1 ¼ pounds of honey.

I also have those cute honey bears and found baby bears that hold just 2 ounces of honey. Take a look at Bee Lady Honey products in my flier at this link.

The National Honey Board last year worked with the Food Network to suggest some creative ways to use honey. You’ll find them in the image at the end of this blog.

Some people prefer honey in their morning coffee. Others like it on oatmeal. I’d love to hear how you enjoy your honey! Here’s wishing everyone a sweet September!

Source: National Honey Board and The Food Network

It might be the closest we get to the life of Tom Sawyer, who famously persuaded his friends to have the “pleasure” of whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence. In our case, the “fence” is extracting honey from umpteen frames we’ve removed from our bee colonies.

It’s a gooey, sticky job, usually done in our garage out of sight of the bees. And we usually choose a sticky, hot day in late August, good for the flow of honey but not necessarily for the comfort of the humans doing the extraction.

The job includes hours of standing at a table with a heated knife to slice the wax caps off both sides of each frame. Each honey box holds nine frames, and we put about 14 honey boxes on four hives. You do the math – that’s a lot of frames to process!

Once that task is done, uncapped frames go into a large metal tub – three frames at a time. A hand-powered crank rotates the frames to remove the honey like a giant salad spinner.

At the bottom of the tub is a spigot, which we open to empty the honey into a four-gallon bucket. A mesh basket on top of the bucket filters out wax and other debris as is flows out of the extractor. I usually bottle the honey another day in the kitchen.

Lots of work? You bet!

A full frame of honey

Slicing off the wax caps

Using the heated knife

Making sure honey is uncapped

Everyone gets a t urn

Spinning the frames

Another beautiful frame

The work setup

Lots of licks!

But also lots of fun! Just ask our grandkids, friends, neighbors and family. They’ve all been a part of this annual affair.

This year we had something like 15 people packed into our garage where we hide the honey boxes after they’ve been harvested. We always extract in the garage mainly because we can hose down the area when we are done. It is next to impossible to keep honey contained. Only a drop or two will create a sticky mess on the floor, doorknobs, faucets, equipment, chairs, you name it.

I baked plenty of cornbread and zucchini muffins to eat with the honey and prepared a do-it-yourself midday picnic on the deck. We had lots of help pulling frames, uncapping honey, turning the crank and watching the honey flow out the gate.

It’s also a fun time to share our hobby with others, explain the process, answer questions, impart a few “gee-whiz” facts and generally talk about bees, a favorite pastime of any bee geek like me.

The first thing is to sort the frames into uncapped honey and capped honey. We try to keep the two types separate because the uncapped honey does not keep as well as the capped honey. Honey in cells that have been capped by the bees with a light coat of wax will keep literally forever. They cap it when honey has only 18 percent moisture. How they know that, I’ll never figure out.

Uncapped honey, or wet honey, can be further dehydrated using a de-humidifier in a closed room. I usually do not bother doing that, instead, enjoying it right away and giving to friends and family to enjoy.

The next step gets a lot of interest from the adults who come to our honey party. This is when we use a heated knife to slice off the top layer of wax on the honey combs. Many adults find it strangely satisfying to watch the wax layer curl into a cone, so every adult gets a turn to use the heated knife.

After the frames are in the extractor, the younger folks help turn the crank to make the frames spin. Our extractor has a plastic lid so they easily can watch the honey fly.

When the extractor gets full, we open the honey gate at the bottom. This always plays to an audience and a few “oohs” and “ahhs.”

The cappings go back on top of the bee hives as well as the spun-out honey frames. The bees are quick to clean up both. Before that last step, however, there is plenty of honey around for tasting!

The party lasts most of a day, and our guests are free to come and go. It’s a great time and something that has become somewhat of a tradition. And at the end of the day, we have that great feeling of having accomplished something – although I know our bees have done the lion’s share of the work.

We processed a record amount of honey this year – 213 pounds or about 18 gallons. It’s sitting in seven buckets, waiting to be bottled and labeled. For now, that’s enough. I feel truly blessed by our bees!