From Hive to Table
You probably know honey comes from bees. But how does it get from a beehive to your morning toast? At Adee Honey Farms, we know that the best product comes from the best process. Here’s how the golden stuff our bees produce becomes craved by honey lovers everywhere.
Gear Up
To check our beehives for the subtly sweet honey of an Adee Honey Farms bee, we’ll need some protective gear. The traditional beekeeper outfit includes a hat with a facial covering, overalls with sleeves to protect against any stings, and gloves to protect our hands when we open our hives. It’s not always necessary to wear the entire getup, but it’s best to be comfortable when working around honeybees.
When we’ve got on the proper gear, we’re ready to go get some honey.
The Anatomy of a Hive
We like to do things the right way at Adee Honey Farms, especially when it comes to our beehives. We want ours to be the safest and most efficient (for us and our bees). There are a few different types of hives, each with their own unique qualities. The one we use, the Langstroth, reduces the traffic of our honeybees and their product. This ensures that the honey is as clean as possible and can be easily harvested without disturbing the queen or her babies (broods).
Harvesting
The key to harvesting the sweet, all-natural honey of an Adee honeybee is patience. Slow and steady movements get the job done efficiently and are appreciated by our many worker-bees.
Honeycombs are located at the top of the hive for ease of access. Once we’re inside we need to clear the area of as many bees as we can. Honeybees can be more active, so we use smoke to help calm them down a bit. Once it’s safe, we’ll start collecting the honeycombs for extraction. All we need to do is keep the bees separate from our harvest, which is easy thanks to the type of hive we use. Any stragglers will be gently brushed off the honeycomb into the hive. This process is repeated one hive at a time. All the honeycomb we collect is then brought back to our warehouse so we can extract the honey.
Extraction
Extracting honey from a honeycomb is no small feat – thankfully, equipment makes the process easier. When a comb is full of honey a bee’s instinct is to seal it in with a wax coating, which can be difficult to remove. Luckily there are tools to help make this process easier. Now nothing stands in the way of reaching the liquid gold within the honeycomb – except a little more work.
If you know honey, you know it moves slowly. So, to separate the honey from the comb, we use what’s called an extractor. It uses centrifugal force (a process of quickly spinning something in a circular motion) to empty the honey from each comb, into a drum. Now it’s ready for our final inspections before bottling and shipping.
Finishing Touches
At Adee Honey Farms, our honey is as real as it gets (we could eat it straight out of the extractor!). Most times, however, there’s excess wax from the honeycombs that needs to be filtered out. Then it’s ready to be bottled and shipped right to you. No extra additives or preservatives: just authentic honey from our Adee Honey Farms bees.
