Posts Tagged ‘bee honey tips’

Now every one knows that you are not doing nature a service by providing the bees a place to live by setting up a bee hive, they are quite capable of doing that themselves. Your main intention is to harvest honey, and a lot of it. The best way is to set up a bee hive and regularly inspect it for the produce.

By inspecting the supers in the hive you will know that it is time to collect your share of the honey hive when you notice the supers have honey comps and are closed with caps of wax. All you need to do is to take out the honey combs and get to the honey – easier said than done!

Now harvesting the honey fro the bee hive will not be such a problem for the experienced bee keeper. You will need to wear special be keeping gear that will prevent you from getting stung by the ferocious little creatures that can get pretty aggressive if someone tries to steal their food.

Bee keeping gear consists of light colored clothes, because bees are attracted to bright colors. You must also stay calm if they swarm over your face mask. You will also need some additional tools such as a scraping tool and a smoker.

When you are sure the supers are full, you can proceed to encourage the bees to leave the super. Some chemicals available in the market will make this task easier. One very popular chemical that is used to scare the bees away is called ‘bee go’. This is applied to what is called a fumer board when the bees get a scent of the ‘Bee Go’ the bees move to the base of the hive. This leaves the hive free from any bees ready for you to take out the honey combs. Fisher Bee Quick is another good chemical that assists in removing he bees from the hive without harming them. They just find the scent very offensive and move to the bottom of the hive.

Once you have safely removed the honey filled honeycombs from the hive you need to extract the honey from it. You must first remove the wax caps from the cells. These wax caps seal the honey within the combs. You can use a metal knife to remove the wax caps, this is better achieved if the knife has been slightly heated on a fire as it melts the wax a little. It is, in fact, better to warm the knife by dipping it into a basin of hot water.

The honey will begin to drip from the comb once the caps are removed. It is best that you place the comb on a cheese cloth that has been placed over a pot to collect the honey. The honey will strain through the cloth leaving the caps behind.

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Honey bees work tirelessly to assist in pollinating flowers in the fields and collecting the nectar in their hives in order to process it into the sweet tasting honey as we know it. The nectar bees collect from the center of the flowers and process it to make a thick sweet liquid that is what we call honey. This honey is nothing but food for the bees.
In the process of collecting nectar from the flowers the bees help nature pollinate other flowers as the pollen from flowers is distributed or delivered to other flowers when the bees fly from one flower to the other. This is how the reproduction of flowers is assisted by the honey bee.
Bees move in swarms and these thousands of little creatures work tirelessly to collect nectar and deposit it in their hives where another group of bees process the nectar and turn it into honey. This honey is stored in special chambers in the hive called ‘honey combs’. The bees feed on this honey.
Humans have developed a taste for honey, which is very nutritional and has some medicinal value too. So they have learnt to cultivate honey bees in man made bee hives. The bee hives are constructed out of wood and make it easier for the bee keeper to collect the honey as and when it is ready without disturbing the bees and their off spring.
The man made bee hive looks like a wooden box no larger than 1 and a ½ feet by 1 and a ½ feet and stands about 2 feet tall. This four sided structure has a small opening from where the bees enter and leave the hive. Once the bee hive is set up and placed on a flat surface to prevent it from tipping over with the wind, the bee keeper may introduce bees to the hive by buying a swarm from a bee farm or he can just wait for the bees to find the hive themselves. Both ways work equally well.
Within a matter of 40 days the bee keeper will be able to slide out the honey combs without disturbing the bees. Care must be taken not to remove all the honey or the bees will starve. This way, the bee keeper collects his keep for providing the bees with a safe place to breed. Cultivating honey bee farms is a very good way of earning a living and a fun way too. However, some sort of training is required, mainly for the safety of the bee keeper as bee stings can be fatal at times – so a bit of caution and safety techniques is required.