How Bee's make honey

Have any of you heard of a process called Inversion?
Probably not. This is the name of the process that honey bees use to turn nectar into honey.

The average hive has 50k in population at any time. Our hive will be less to begin with, but hopefully will grow and prosper.

Here is the basic process:

Bees fly to flowers, they aren't too picky about what type of flower, and they do two things. First, they attract pollen via static electricity to their legs and the hairs on their body. Then, they use their tongue to suck the nectar out of it.

Pretty much all flowers have nectar of some kind, and this is what the bees suck into their "honey stomach". This starts the process of inversion. The bee's stomach starts to break down the natural sugars in the nectar into more simple sugars.

When the bee gets back to the hive, she regurgitates it (yes...honey is bee puke) into a cell. Another bee than eats it and her honey stomach continues the process of inversion. Sugars becomes simple and more concentrated. The second bee regurgitates it back into a cell and another bees eats it and continues the process.After a point in time and once the cell is full, they start to fan. The water content of this virgin honey is very high and still have yeasts from the sugars in it, so the bee's fan the virgin honey until the water is mostly evaporated, somewhere between 12 and 14%. This prevents the yeasts and sugars from fermenting.

No one know how the bees know to get it to that stage or why the bees eat and regurgitate over and over again until the desired quality is attained, or how they all know what the desired quality is. They just do.

Finished yummy product



Just remember, anything you get in honey, little specks of things....is always pollen or wax and can't hurt you. Put it in your mouth, eat it! Enjoy it. Its nutritious AND delicious!

next post: honeycomb

The Premier Post

Sadly, this blog isn't in Portuguese, but "abelhas manutenção" means "keeping bees" and since this project is the Grandpa Azevedo Memorial Bee Hive and he was a proud American of Azorian decent, it makes sense.

So, far I haven't found anything online about beekeeping in the Azores, but, that doesn't mean they don't. In fact, there is not a lot online about the Azore islands at all, so I am not suprised. I suspect that since there is grapes growing in massive quantities on the islands..Bees are integral to the wine process.

I personally, grew up with bees in my life and I am convinced they are magic. How can they not be? No pun intended. They take something as small as pollen and turn it into honey and royal jelly and make wax.

Honey and beekeeping goes back pretty far. Bee's and honey are supposed to have a history dating back 10 to 20 million years and that actual jars of 2000 year old honey have been found uncorrupted in Eqyptian tombs, and it was edible. They used honey for medicine and sacrifices. Honey wine is the oldest fermented drink, the vikings, my ancestors made it and enjoyed it, a lot.

Honey never goes bad. Comb can, but not honey. The only thing that destroys this is adding hot water. It kills the natural enzymes in it. Luckily, I only do that when I am about to consume it in a cup of tea with my friends. Many people think that crystallised honey, or powdered honey is bad or usable. In fact, that is simply not true. Put your jar of crystallised honey in hot water (don't add the water too the honey, it can handle heat) and it will soften and clear up again and taste just as delicious as it did in the first place.

Honey is technically, in a measurable sense, sweeter than sugar. Many people don't realise that, but in a scientific sense, it really is. Personally, the different variations in the flavor of honey is what fools my taste buds.

Honey doesn't have just one taste. People think it does because they are used to the clover honey you get in the stores. DON'T FOR THE LOVE OF GOD EAT THAT!!! Many commercial company's pasturize and add sweeteners to the honey, this keeps a consistent taste and kills any of the health benefits of the honey. KILLS THE BENEFITS OF HONEY! You are basically eating corn syrup flavored as honey. FAIL.

Honey tastes like the flowers, or combination of flowers that the bees ate. They eat a combination of pollen and honey for their food...the make honey from the pollen as a way of putting away food for the winter. Man just figured out a way to steal. So, if you have a field of poppies....and you bees just eat that pollen and make honey from it, you will have poppy honey. Don't worry, its not opium honey...thats a human process of the sap...I wonder what poppy honey would taste like?

Generally, at farmers markets and such, you will find what ever is more prolific. In my part of the world (not the Azores) we get fireweed, blackberry and raspberry and sometimes pear and apple, depending on the time of year and exact area. My father's bees had a lot of fireweed, so that's the honey we are when I was a kid. My bees will have a lot to choose from, roses (nom nom) and various flowers that my amazingly green thumbed Mother in Law grows as well as her garden and the farm land near the hive.

Here are some photos from the building process.

My father in law loading the kit from Ruhl Bee supply
the black comb is for the brood boxes and the white is for the honey box.



This is the boxes and frames done. All I have to do is paint and insert the foundations


This is me applying water based glue to the box joints.


This is the honey comb base for the honey box. It smells AMAZING


Thanks for viewing my blog. I look forward to chronicling the ups and downs, joys and sorrows of beekeeping. Stay tuned for more information, painting pictures and in April, when the bees get here....the beginning.