Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Boojum Beeyard: Honey Harvest! Part 2

One of the most exciting aspects of keeping bees is well underway at the Boojum Institute: The honey harvest!!

Just like any agriculture, bees are “farmed”. Egg farms have chickens that lay eggs, vegetable farms have acres of produce that they grow, and dairies have cows that are milked. Beekeepers keep bees for a couple of agricultural purposes. Bees are transported to orchards and farms to help pollinate the crop and increase yields. Another agricultural use for bees is probably the first thing that comes to most people’s minds: honey!

Honey is the rich, sweet liquid gold that honeybees produce. It is amazing in both taste and healthful properties. To learn more about honey, see Bee Knowledgeable Answers: Honey! and Bee Knowledgeable: Bee Savvy! for more honey facts!

We pulled the honey from the Boojum Bees in September. If you missed it, you can catch up: The Boojum Beeyard: Honey Harvest! Part 1 This week we extracted the honey from all those frames we pulled! Here’s how it went:

First we set up our uncapping tank. This is a long, deep, rectangular, stainless steel basin that has a drain.
 photos: Robyn Young

A large screen fits inside the tank onto which the wax and honey will fall during the uncapping process. The screen catches the wax and any honey that escapes the combs can drip through to the bottom of the tank. A drain and valve on the bottom allows the gathered honey to drain out into a bucket. A bar is also fitted horizontally across the top of the tank. This acts as a rest for the frame while uncapping.


The first super of honeycomb fames to be uncapped:


The frames full of capped over honey cells are hung in the uncapping tank to one side of the bar. We use a hot knife to slice off the wax caps that seal the honey cells. This knife is electrically heated and easily cuts through the wax.






This was my first experience in extracting honey and I learned a lot. Here I focus on learning to master the hot knife.

 The caps that were missed by the hot knife are scratched open using a scratcher, a tool that looks like a sharp, metal comb.



After the frames are uncapped, we place them on the other side of the bar. They are ready to be extracted. The wax caps fall onto the screen in the uncapping tank and any dripping honey drains down. That way, as little honey as possible is lost in the process.
Here is our four frame extractor:

The large, steel cylinder holds a four-sided cage. The uncapped frames are fitted inside the cage.


When the extractor is turned on, the cage inside the cylinder spins. The honey is flung from the open cells by centrifugal force, splattering the inside walls of the cylinder. Look closely at the following photos, can you see the honey being spun out from the frames? These shots were taken while the extractor was in motion; the camera’s shutter speed was able to capture this without much blurring:



 We extract one side of four frames, and then turn them around to extract the other side.




If the frames are not fairly even in weight, it will unbalance the extractor. Then it must be held down to keep it from jumping off the bench:

The honey then runs down the inside of the extractor and collects in the bottom. A valve lets the honey pour out:
 We strain the last bits of wax from the honey as it drains from the extractor into the bucket.

Down to the last set of frames! The whole room is redolent with the rich, heady aroma of honey. Yum!

Almost 200 pounds of honey was harvested from the Boojum Bees! How cool is that? And if you happened to have been visited by the Boojum Bees in your classroom, this yummy honey is the product of those very same bees!

And all that wonderful White Sage and Buckwheat honey may soon be available to you! Support the Boojum Institute for Experiential Education and the incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experiences they offer. Support the Boojum Bees. Watch this blog to find out how to get your very own Boojum Honey as soon as it is available!!

Friday, October 22, 2010

Bee Knowledgeable: Honeybees in Winter

The weather has dramatically cooled here where the Boojum Institute is located in the mountains of Southern California. The summer season has officially passed into autumn and this last pattern of storms has brought quite the chill. For the last week, we have had nightly low temperatures from 34F to 38F (1-3C).

So what is happening in the bee yard with this weather and temperature change? We discussed some of the behaviors in honeybees as the seasons cycle around the year in our post Seasons of the Honeybee.

Photo of some beehives in winter:
 photo: Boris Romanov


Honeybees, like most insects, are exothermic or cold-blooded animals. This means that they cannot maintain a warm body temperature on their own. Exothermic animals must find heat fro their environment. For example, reptiles are exothermic as well, and they find warmth by resting on hot, sun-warmed rocks. Humans are endothermic, or warm-blooded. Our bodies naturally generate warmth from within.

Most insects hibernate, or go to sleep, when it gets cold. Honeybees do not. They are unique in the insect world for this. While an individual honeybee is exothermic, the collective colony is actually endothermic. When the temperature drops below 54-57F (12-14C), honeybees gather in a group forming a ball of bees called a cluster. The bees within the cluster all shiver their fight muscles. Honeybees are able to detach their flight muscles from their wings. This way, when they vibrate those muscles with their wings detached, their wings do not move. The muscles simply move against each other and this generates heat. When the entire colony of bees does this within the hive, they can generate enough heat and maintain the hive temperature at around 70F (21C).

Infrared photo of beehives showing heat distribution within the hive:
 photo: Boris Romanov

The bees will cluster over their stored food. As the bees eat the honey from one section of comb they will move to another, full section of honeycomb. The entire cluster will move from one section of honeycomb to another as they eat their winter stores. The honey and pollen they have stored for the winter gives them the energy they need to constantly shiver their wing muscles and keep their colony warm and healthy.

The cluster of bees can adapt as the weather changes. As the temperature gets colder, the cluster will contract. The bees will pack as tightly together as possible, contracting the cluster and generating the maximum possible warmth. When the temperature warms some, the cluster will expand and grow larger. It is the same number of bees, but they allow more space between individuals and do not generate as much heat. By expanding and contracting the cluster, honeybees are able to maintain an almost constant temperature within the hive.

There is one more element that allows bees to survive the winter without hibernating. Towards the end of summer, the new bees that hatch are actually “winter bees”. They are physiologically different than summer bees. Where summer bees are lighter and smaller for long flights and foraging for food, winter bees are born larger and fattier. The fattier bodies allow them to survive the cold with less food. Their blood is also different. The winter bee has a different blood protein profile than summer bees. This also helps them to survive the colder temperatures.

During the cold, winter months, honeybees will stop producing brood. The eggs and brood require higher temperatures to develop and hatch. So in most climates, the queen stops laying eggs and brood production stops while the temperature is too cold outside. Also, the healthier and larger colonies have a better chance of winter survival. The larger the cluster they can form (basketball size), the more warmth they can generate. The smaller colonies can only form smaller clusters (softball sized) and therefore generate less heat and have more bee deaths over the winter.

Here is a photo of bees clustering:




For a more in-depth look at what happens in honeybee colonies over the winter, check out this fascinating article at Beesource:
The Thermology of Wintering Honeybee Colonies