About bees
Scientists already know an enormous amount about bees – there are shelves and shelves of books in libraries written about bees – but we’re still learning new things all the time.
- In every colony of bees there are 3 castes (types) of bee: a queen (just one!), drones (hundreds), workers (thousands).
- The queen is longer than the other bees and lays up to 2000 eggs in a day.
- The drones are the male bees, whose job is to mate with the queen.
- The workers are females, who have different jobs in and outside of the hive – cleaning, feeding, keeping the hive at an ideal temperature, and going out for food.
- Worker bees live for around 40 days, and in that time a worker will only produce about half a teaspoon of honey.
- Worker bees communicate the location of a food source to other workers, with a complicated dance. The dance uses the position of the sun as a point of reference, tells the others how abundant the food source is, and even takes into account things like a strong headwind!
- Worker bees travel kilometres to find their food – 3km (and preferably much less!) will make for happy bees, but they will travel far more if they need to.
- Bees produce honey for their winter food, but typically produce 2-3 times more than they need to get the hive through winter.
- If the queen dies, or if the hive gets too crowded, workers will create a new queen by feeding a larva royal jelly. A queen created when the hive is crowded will take a large proportion of the bees with her to form a new colony – this is called “swarming”.
About honey
- Honeycomb: pretty much nothing done to it – just cut from the frame of a beehive!
- Raw honey: unheated, untreated, and unfiltered honey.
- Candied honey: all natural honeys will crystallise over time; this changes the texture, but nothing else – the quality of the product remains the same. Unfiltered honey will crystallise faster, as will honeys stored in cooler room temperatures. You can warm candied honey to make it smooth again, if that’s your preference. Some producers actually experiment with ‘seeding’ their liquid honeys with candied honeys to create specific textures from the selected crystal structures.
- Creamed honey: this is made by whipping candied honey.
- Liquid honey: filtered and stored at beehive temperature (not above 36°C) to delay candying.
We have several different varieties/sources of honey, as a result of having dedicated, licensed sites, as well as the pollination services we provide to farmers growing bee-reliant crops: Leatherwood, Prickly Box, Manuka, Forest, and Ground Flora. You’ll find our varieties in our shops, along with tasters to let you try the difference.
There is a widely-held belief that eating local honey can reduce the effects of hay fever or other plant-specific allergies. While many people swear by it, as with a lot of alternative medicinal approaches, the jury may be out in terms of the scientific proof for the time being. Here’s one 2002 study that suggests it’s all bunkum, and here’s one from 2011 that showed an anti-allergy benefit from honey in general.
So we’ll just say try it and see how it works for you… Of course we’d say that!
