Honey does not immediately reveal all its secrets. In order to be fully saturated with healing power, he must stay in the combs for at least 7 days. Only in this case, the inversion is completed and it is enriched with healing enzymes and amino acids, which are so useful for the human body.
But the unripe product is saturated with water, as a result of which it is not stored for long. Therefore, it is so important to carry out the pumping process correctly and on time, which will be discussed in this article.
List of all plants and flowers from which bees collect honey (including red)
Did you know that the honey bee not only produces honey, but also plays a major role in pollination of agricultural plants.
Each bee works almost all day without stopping, collecting pollen and delivering it to the hive. The process of collecting pollen necessary to create nectar with further transformation into honey does not occur from all types of melliferous plants, which include many plants and flowers. The most popular and common honey plants:
- early honey plant - mother-and-stepmother grass. It emits not only nectar, but also pollen, and also has a lot of useful properties. Productivity - about 50 kg per 1 ha;
- pine cone - located in shady areas with moist soils. Blossoming June - September. Productivity - an average of 1.2 tons per hectare;
- medicinal dandelion is one of the most abundant plants on Earth, the flowering period begins in July. Average productivity index - 80 kg per 1 ha;
- mint - most often found in soils with high levels of moisture. Bloom - June - September. The average rate of honey collection is 1.1 tons per hectare;
- medicinal lungwort is one of the earliest melliferous plants. Blossoming April - May. It grows only in forests. The average rate of honey collection is 55 kg per hectare;
- coppice noble, also grows mainly in forests. Flowering - early spring;
Little tricks of beekeepers when collecting honey. The beekeeper enters the hive if he is not afraid of bites, or drives away the swarm with smoke. Nevertheless, it does not calm insects with smoke: thinking that a fire is starting, they gain a strategic supply of honey, and with their bellies full, they can no longer release their stings.
- meadow cornflower - from June to September there is a flowering period. Average harvest from 1 hectare - 100 kg;
- common blackhead grass - like mint, loves moist soils, blooms from June to September. Collecting nectar - on average 110 kg per hectare;
- autumn kulbaba - average productivity is standard, up to 85 kg per hectare. Blossoming July - September;
- white clover (legume family) - flower activity from May to early June. Collection of honey - up to 110 kg per hectare.
Flowers-melliferous plants include:
- sweet clover;
- chicory;
- meadow geranium (crane);
- ordinary sunflower;
- chamomile medicinal;
- field and meadow cornflowers;
- colchicum (colchicum);
- dandelion ordinary honey plant;
- English mustard (white);
- blackhead;
- marsh aster honey plant;
- lilac.
What plant do bees collect red honey from?
Interesting fact. The path that a strong bee colony flies during the main honey gathering is in total equal to the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
In addition to the classic varieties of honey, there is a rare red honey in nature. Place of manufacture - Nepal.To collect pollen and nectar, bees need a special flower that grows high in the mountains - the rhododendron. Producers of red honey are large bees Apis Laboriosa, living in nests on sheer cliffs at an altitude of about 3000 m. This type of honey has a greater set of useful properties than any other varieties.
Among the features of red honey can be noted rejuvenating effect, slowing down the aging process and strengthening the body's defenses and immunity.
Method without honey extractor
Many experienced beekeepers say that it is impossible to get honey without a honey extractor, as it is inconvenient and unprofitable. If for some reason you are unable to use this device, do not despair. Dexterous beekeepers have learned to get out of any situation, so you can follow their example and perform the following manipulations:
- honeycombs need to be taken out of the frame, broken into small pieces and sent to a bucket;
- using a wooden pusher, turn the resulting pieces into mashed potatoes;
- the resulting mixture is filtered with gauze;
- leftovers can be collected from the walls and bottom to drain.
Using this advice, you can get honey without using a honey extractor. However, you should be prepared for the fact that such a process will take a lot of time and effort. Beekeepers strongly recommend resorting to the help of a honey extractor, which you can make with your own hands using blueprints.
How bees collect honey
Did you know that bees, by virtue of the peculiarity of their vision, see flowers best of all in blue, white and yellow flowers? And flying up to the taphole, the bee opens it and presents the smell to the guards as a pass.
The collection of honey begins with an exploration process. The organizers and executors of the process are scout bees who fly around the area around the apiary and examine it for flowers, trees, grasses to collect pollen and nectar with high sugar levels.
As soon as the search process is completed and the best option for honey harvesting has been found, the bees fly back to the apiary and show their relatives where to fly for harvesting with a special “bee dance” with special movements.
The second link in the honey collection chain is the collecting bees. They join the scout bees, following them exactly all the movements. Periodically, bees collecting honey touch them with the tips of their antennae, taking away the extracted nectar. After that, the bee from the category of scouts takes the collecting bees with it, their turn comes to participate in the important process of collecting nectar.
The cells that make up the honeycomb are considered to be the most rational natural geometric shape for the vessel. For their structure, a minimum of building material is required. 100 bee cells are made from 1.3 g of wax. The most amazing thing about honeycombs is their spaciousness and strength.
Collecting insects fly around one honey plant after another, determining the presence and amount of nectar using special receptors located on their paws.
When the sugar nectar is found, the bee enriches it with the contents of the salivary glands, then it places it in the cavity on the abdomen. It is after the end of this process that the transformation of sweet nectar into honey begins.
On average, the capacity of the bee's pouch-like cavity is 45 mg. As soon as it is completely filled, the collecting insect flies back to the hive and transfers the priceless cargo to the receiving bees. In 24 hours of work, bees cultivate an area of honey plants up to 11 hectares. The productivity that one bee achieves in a lifetime is about 4–4.5 grams of honey.
Composition and functions of the bee colony
In a large bee family, everyone performs their own specific work and their role:
- Uterus - produces offspring by laying eggs, from which new worker bees and young queen bees (from a fertilized egg) and drones (from an unfertilized egg) emerge. Hive queens can live for about 7 years.
- Drones - displayed only in the summer. Their role is to fertilize the queen and young bees, which can create new colonies. Their life lasts about a month. They do not know how to feed on their own, they are fed by bees. Therefore, by the end of the working season, they drive the drones out of the hive, thus saving food supplies.
- Worker bees — they are sterile females. Their number in a healthy family can reach 20,000 or more. They do a certain job according to their age.
For example, the smallest bees (up to four days old) provide, so to speak, "cleaning services" - they clean their house of debris and polish the combs. When they are from 4 to 6 days old, they are like nursing mothers, they feed the larvae with honey.
Figure 3. Each bee colony has a queen, workers and male drones
One-week-old individuals develop glands that produce milk. The uterus and larvae feed on it. From 11 to 17 days in young minke whales, wax-producing glands begin to function. During this period, they begin to build new honeycombs and seal them already filled with ripe honey. They also take the nectar brought by the bees and process it into honey. They also maintain the required temperature in the hive.
Starting from the 18th day of life, they fly out with the rest of the swarm for honey collection. From 2.5-3 weeks of age, worker bees do absolutely all the work necessary for a full-fledged family life: they do the cleaning, feed the larvae and the queen, build and seal the honeycombs, carry nectar and process it into full-fledged honey, protect the hive from unexpected guests.
Spring and summer workers do not live long, a little more than a month. As they work hard, their wings wear out quickly and they die. Autumn bees live for about 10 months because they are less mobile. It is these bees that bring the first spring honey (Figure 3).
What factors affect the amount of honey
Interesting fact. Bees are champions of smell. They perceive and distinguish smells 1000 times stronger than humans. Successful attempts are being made to use the sense of smell of bees to search for explosives and narcotic substances.
The amount of honey depends not only on the working insects, but also on external factors, including:
- variety of honey plants and their density;
- knowledge and experience of the beekeeper;
- location of honey plants (relative to the apiary);
- weather and climatic conditions (one of the most important reasons);
- preventive measures in the apiary and their timely implementation.
Instruments
Used as tools:
- Honey extractors - chordial, radial.
- Hot electric knife.
- Or a simple kitchen tool that needs to be warmed up before opening the honeycomb.
- And of course a smoker in the case when you need to drive the bees off the frame.
- Spray gun for spraying honeycombs with warm water in case of pumping out candied honey.
Why do bees need pollen
Nectar and pollen are the main components of the future sweet product. It is they that play a decisive role in the aroma and taste obtained in the output. Let's consider in more detail what functions pollen performs.
Interesting facts about bees. A honey insect can deliberately fly into someone else's hive. The reason is the robbery of a weaker family, when there is a bad bribe around, or the inability to return to her family (late, cold, rain) - in this case, she takes a pose of submissiveness, and the watchmen let her in.
Honey pollen is necessary not only for making honey, but also for feeding all the inhabitants of the apiary. Honey elixir is a vital part of the diet of bees, without which they will not survive and will not have enough strength to work, as well as to produce royal jelly. The queen consumes the nectar until she reaches adulthood, the working class bees only 3 days.
Another category of insects in the apiary is builders.They also need nectar and pollen, because they help their wax glands work efficiently, so that bees can build high-quality, strong honeycombs to store honey.
Pollen is also necessary for drones, which act as inseminators for females in the apiary. The lack of such a vital component threatens an incorrect and prolonged process of puberty, as well as a lack of strength to carry out their main duties.
In addition to all of the above, pollen and nectar are a kind of "test" for bee bread, bees noticeably weaken without it in winter.
Now you know about the role of pollen and its necessity for every member of the working insect family.
Container
Naturally, for pumping and storage, containers are used that have no foreign smell. It must be made of materials that have the right to contact with food. It can be:
- Metal containers with lacquered inner coating.
- Wooden.
- Ceramic with glazed coating on the inner surfaces.
- Aluminum flasks.
- Glass.
Of course, it is desirable that the container for the honey collector complies with GOST 54644-2011. And you shouldn't store honey in containers larger than 3 liters.
Following all the recommendations, you can easily carry out the correct pumping of honey without harming insects and getting the long-awaited high-quality honey and bee products.
The process of processing nectar into honey
The highest honey harvests are obtained in the Far East and Siberia. There are cases when, during the flowering period of linden in the Far East, the weight gain of the control hive reached 30–33 kg per day. Individual families in the apiary during the season collected 420 kg of honey in Siberia, and 330–340 kg of honey in the Far East.
The transformation of sugar nectar into a honey product begins when the bee collects pollen from the honey plant. When the pharynx is opened, a kind of vacuum is formed in the insect, due to which not only nectar is absorbed into the goiter, but also the glandular pharyngeal secretion with an increased content of invertase. Its action helps to break down the sugar of the nectar into grape and fruit. The final processing of the nectar takes place inside the evidence.
The receiving bee swallows the nectar several times, processing and mixing it with the secretion of the pharyngeal glands. It contains enzymes such as:
- amylase;
- catalase;
- invertase;
- maltase and many others.
During this processing process, excess moisture is eliminated. The process time is about 15-25 minutes. After the specified time, the nectar becomes thicker by 70–75%.
If the collecting bees deliver too much nectar to the hive, the cells are filled with them without processing. Basically, it looks like a small blob attached to the inner wall of the honeycomb. Such a harvested crop is also processed by the receiving bee, but a little later.
Do you know that bees are endowed with a mysterious ability for humans: in exceptional cases, to preserve the family, lengthen their life by 5-6 times?
The next step is to lay out the thickened syrup into honeycombs for further maturation. Excess moisture evaporates quickly thanks to the ventilation in the evidence created by the bees, as a result of which an optimal temperature regime of 35 degrees is created. When the percentage of moisture in the thickened nectar reaches the level of 19–20%, the bees fill the combs completely and cover them with a thin layer of wax, which prevents moisture from getting inside.
Summing up, we can say for sure that the creation of everyone's beloved honey is the fruit of the hard and long work of the entire bee family. Each bee in the evidence effectively performs its work duties, and sweet honey is the result of well-coordinated, painstaking work.
How wild bees differ from domestic ones
Among those existing today, almost 20 thousand.bee species, wild forest honey bees occupy a rather modest place. They become so rare insects that they are even listed in the Red Book.
They differ from the usual domestic bees:
- a darker gray color without bright yellow stripes on the abdomen;
- denser hair, allowing them to better tolerate low temperatures;
- a larger head;
- more aggressive character;
- more caution;
- higher efficiency;
- greater resistance to disease.
The benefits of honey
Having learned what honey is, how this amazing creation of nature turns out, I would like to add about its unique properties. There are two types of this product:
- floral;
- honeydew.
The first type is made from nectar collected from honey plants. It can contain up to seven different types of sugars. Its taste is directly dependent on the type of plant and external factors - as soon as the flowering process begins, the amount of nectar is maximal, and after pollination it decreases, with increased air humidity - the nectar is less sweet and vice versa.
Honeydew is made from a sweet liquid of animal origin, which is the waste product of other insects that feed on the sap and nectar of plants and flowers.
Honey of the second type is much more useful than the first for humans, as it contains a greater amount of amino acids, organic acids, mineral and nitrogenous substances, as well as various enzymes, but this product is not suitable for feeding the bee family, since it contains a large amount of mineral salts that are harmful insects.
This sweet beekeeping product has unique healing properties. It soothes, has a beneficial effect on metabolism, raises immunity. He has no equal in the treatment of colds and viral diseases, stomach and duodenal ulcers. Honey has wound healing and bactericidal properties. It is used in cosmetics for skin and hair care. For a long time you can enumerate about the advantages and benefits of "sweet gold".
Collecting nectar, bees not only produce honey, but also pollinate plants, transferring pollen from one flower to another, thereby bringing great benefits to agriculture. Without these striped laborers, there would be no harvest in the fields and gardens. I am simply delighted with the diligence and great diligence of these amazing insects, which are a unique miracle of Mother Nature herself and an example for many people. Bees and honey are a unique gift of nature to humans that should be appreciated.
