Honey bees collect nectar from plants and store it in a concentrated form as a food store. They also store pollen in their nests, to feed the colony's young, but the product most beekeepers are primarily interested in is honey. The nectar which bees collect from plants is a very dilute sugary solution, which the bees collect and bring back to their hives, storing it in waxen cells. The bees then evaporate much of the water, concentrating the solution greatly until the water content is reduced to about 18%. Enzymes are also added to the nectar before it is termed honey - in fact, the honey which you eat will have already been in a bee's stomach several times!

When the solution is fully concentrated, or 'ripe', the bees cover the cells with a cap of wax, which they secrete from specially adapted parts of their bodies.  When the honeycombs have been mostly capped in this way, they are cleared of bees and removed from the hive for extraction.

Since bees store honey in upward-sloping cells, the honey may be spun out of the combs in an 'extractor', which is a small, hand-driven centrifuge.  First, however, the wax cappings must be removed, using a fork-like device. After extracting, the honey is strained, to remove any bits of wax and other hive detritus, before being put into jars. The honey is not strained finely enough to remove microscopic pollen grains, and so local honey is a natural hay fever remedy, building up the body's defences.

Honey is always extracted when it is a clear solution, but it often crystallizes subsequently. This is not a poor reflection of the honey's quality, but is in fact the surest sign of purity. Having said this, however, some honeys crystallise much faster than others - oil seed rape honey, for example, is known to crystallize unusually rapidly, whilst acacia honey may remain clear for years. There are many factors which affect the speed of crystallization, the main ones being the proportions of glucose and fructose sugars present in the honey, the temperature at which the honey is stored, and even the container it is stored in.

Andrew Norman

Photos below, clockwise from top left: extractor filtering, spinning, bottling, all done

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