We Do Bees: Honey

Honey production begins with the bees feasting on the flowers distributed around their hives and collecting the flower nectar in their mouths. The bee stores nectar in a honey sack. When it is filled she returns to the hive. The enzymes in the bees saliva mix with the nectar in a chemical process which formulates honey. 

Honey is required for bees to make it through the tough seasons of late fall and winter. Honey is their only source of carbohydrates. They flutter their wings to provide ventilation to the honey and reduce its moisture content to make it edible to the hive.

The honey goes through an aging process and is sealed with honey comb to keep it clean and safe.

We separate the honey frames from the brood and pollen frames and take them to the bee lab to be extracted, as shown in the pictures. Then we put together new hives with a couple of small honey frames to provide some food to the bees through the long winter.

The honey frames are put through the extractor which meshes out most of the honey from the honey comb in the frames, but there is always pounds of honey still contained within the comb.

This is when we use our centrifuge. The honey at Cal Poly comes in liquid form which makes it easy to be derived and extracted from the centrifuge equipment we use to separate the remaining honey from the comb.