Honeykart beekeeper helps you to buy pure raw honey from bee farm
1. Apiary site:
- Apiary is a place where bee hives are kept and should be free from pollution.
- Surrounded by enormous flowers to collect honey
- Natural water sources for bees
- Should be free from pesticides, else bees die
- Temperature should not be too hot
- Not in strong winds, so that bees can easily collect honey
2. Bee hive structure
- Bee hive or bee box needs to kept on stand to prevent it from ants
- Bee hive consists of three sections,
- Bottom brood chamber,
- Middle super chamber and
- Lid at the top
- Super chamber is most important for producing pure natural organic honey
- 99% beekeepers in India do not keep super chambers
3. Brood chamber
- It consists of 7 frames of honey comb.
- This chamber contains the entrance at the bottom, through which bees can come and go out of the hive.
- Breeding of honey bees takes place in brood chamber
- Contains eggs, larvae, pupa and 30% honey & pollen to feed young bees
- Honey should not be harvested from this chamber
- The combs in this chamber are big, so more breeding of bees takes place, which increases population on bees and hence help in increase honey collection.
4. Brood frame:
- A wooden frame with projections for hanging inside the hive.
- Totally 7 such frames are kept in a brood chamber
- It consists of string at the center to give mechanical support to honey comb.
- It should be made of teak wood
5. Comb foundation sheet or Wax sheet
- We make comb foundation sheet from 100% pure bees wax.
- This is fitted in empty frame and forms the foundation for bees to build a straight honey comb on it.
- Without comb foundation sheet, the bees will not build a straight comb.
- Straight comb is necessary, else bees get killed while removing and placing combs in the bee box.
6. Forming a new hive
- A new bee hive needs to be developed from brood chamber
- Three brood frames from a developed hive is separated and kept in an empty brood chamber.
- Now empty brood frame with wax sheet is kept inside the hive, next to the fully developed frame.
- When enough bee flora is available, bees collect honey and convert it to wax to build the comb.
- Since bees are less in population, one brood frame will take 10 days to be constructed
7. Setting up a new brood chamber in bee hive
- Four new brood frames with wax sheet fitted are kept inside the hive.
- Bees will build brood frames one by one
- Queen bee will lay eggs in the finished cells of the comb.
- Now lid needs to be placed on brood chamber.
- Empty super chamber should not be kept on partially developed brood chamber
8. Developed Brood chamber
- After 1 month time, the entire brood chamber is filled with bees.
- Now each frame in brood chamber consists of 70% eggs and 30% of honey and pollen to feed eggs and larvae.
- As a good practice, honey should not be collect from brood chamber.
- But in India, beekeepers collect honey from brood chamber only and they don’t use super chamber at all.
- The brood chamber honey is meant for bees to feed larvae and eggs.
- Brood chamber honey will be used by bees during, non honey flow season.
- If brood frame honey is not extracted, artificial sugar feeding is not required during non honey flow season.
9. Adding super chamber to bee hive – Important for producing best quality honey
- Only after brood chamber is fully developed with bees, the super chamber needs to be placed on top of brood chamber.
- The super chamber consists of 7 frames but small in size compared to brood frames.
- If enough bee flora is available, the super chamber will be filled with honey in 2 weeks.
- The super chamber will have top and bottom open, so bees can pass from brood chamber to super chamber for storing surplus honey
10. Checking super chamber for honey storage
- Lid of bee hive is removed first.
- Since bees are now exposed to air, the bees slowly move from super chamber to brood chamber.
- If the combs in super chamber are bulged, then honey is full in super chamber.
- It’s now ready for harvesting.
11. Removing Super frames for honey harvesting
- The super honey frames needs to be removed one by one.
- If bees are aggressive, smoke produced by burning coconut fiber can be used.
- Honey bees in each super frame needs to be dusted into the brood chamber.
- The removed super honey frames is kept in empty super chamber beside me.
12. Honey bees from super chamber are dusted into brood chamber frames.
- The dusted bees present in the top of brood chamber frames moves down to the brood frames and continue some work there.
- The hive should not be kept open for long duration; else bees from other hives come to rob honey from this open hive.
13. Super honey frame filled with honey and wax capped.
- Honey comb is formed of numerous hexagonal tubular cells made of bees wax.
- In each tubular cell, the bees store honey.
- Once each cell is filled with honey, bees prepare wax and seal each cell to prevent honey from exposing to moisture in air.
- This is called wax capping.
- As honey is hygroscopic, it absorbs moisture from air and gets fermented.
- So bees do wax capping of honey to prevent fermentation.
14. Uncapping the wax to remove honey.
- Uncapping of wax needs to be done with sharp bee keeping knife
- It’s like removing the skin of a mango fruit.
- Wax capping needs to be removed on both side of the comb.
- This needs to be done slowly; else it would damage the cells of the comb
15. Uncapped super honey frame with honey
- The uncapped honey frame is ready for extraction.
- Uncapping is done to extract honey with best quality.
- Else comb needs to be squeezed, which will not produce best quality honey.
- Approximately 2kgs of honey will be available in this single frame
16. Stainless steel extractor for best quality honey
- This is one of the stainless steel extractor used in our farm.
- We don’t use iron or galvanized iron extractor, as that will degrade the quality of honey.
- In India 99% of beekeepers use ordinary galvanized iron honey extractors
- The iron rust in ordinary galvanized iron extractor will react with honey, which makes honey not suitable especially for babies and kid’s consumption.
17. Fitting super honey frames in extractor
- Four super frames can be loaded at a time in this extractor.
- If the frames are not seated properly, then honey comb will be damaged during extraction.
- This is on-field extractor, which can be taken to different beekeeping sites for spot extraction
18. Extraction of fresh raw honey from the comb.
- If the extractor shakes during rotation, the combs will be damaged.
- So extractor needs to be held firmly, before rotation of handle.
- On rotating the handle, only honey from comb comes out due to centrifugal force.
- The frame and the comb will be help in position by the mesh present in extractor.
19. Honey settling at the bottom of extractor.
- The honey which hit the inner walls of the extractor during rotation, will now settle at the bottom of the extractor.
- The combs are empty without honey.
- The honey comb is intact with the frame without damage.
20. Empty super honey frame after extraction.
- After honey extraction, the empty honey frames from the extractor are removed
- This needs to be placed back into the super chamber of the hive.
- We don’t cut and remove comb wax because 3kgs of honey is used by bees to prepare 1kg of bee wax.
- So, if this is kept inside the hive, the bees need not use honey to prepare wax again.
- It can immediately start storing honey in the comb.
21. Loading back the empty honey frames into super chamber.
- The empty super frames are brought back to the bee hives from which it was removed.
- One by one the empty frames needs to be kept inside the super chamber.
- This needs to be done gently without disturbing the bees.
- After keeping all the frames inside super chamber, the lid can be placed above the super chamber
22. On-field filtering of honey
- As wax capping was removed from comb using knife, there may be small wax particles in the extracted honey.
- These wax particles needs to be removed.
- Immediate on-field filtration is best to maintain quality of honey
- Stainless steel filter is used for this purpose.
23. Honey is full in super chamber and not extracted.
- Suppose honey is full and not extracted from super chamber, the bees will start to build natural comb in the space found between the lid and super chamber.
- This happens often in our apiary, during the honey flow season.
- Now the honey combs in the lid need to be cut and removed.
- The wax from these combs is used for preparation of wax sheets for our beekeeping purpose.
- Excess wax is supplied to cosmetic industry for organic facial preparations.
24. Honey comb in the lid of hive
- These are the honey combs naturally built by bees inside the lid of the hive.
- When super chamber is full of honey and no space available to store honey in the hive, bees build combs naturally on inside the lid.
- The honey in this lid will be around 4 kg.
- Only honey will be stored in this comb, no eggs or larvae will be present.
- This comb honey taste will be awesome, if we chew honey along with the comb.
25. Honey bee hives in Mango orchid
- These are the bee hives in mango farm.
- Based on the flowering season, we shift the bee hives to floral sources.
- Pollination increases the crop yield by 30%