Pouring honey

The traditional Slovenian breakfast is bread with butter and honey, and honey is also added to tea, eaten when we have a cold, and used to sweeten various pastries. It has become so self-evident to us that we no longer even ask where it comes from. We don't realize that one bee works its whole life to produce 1/12 teaspoon of honey. For a whole jar, a bee would have to visit about 4 million flowers and fly 4 lengths of the equator. But there are still a few steps between a bee that visits a flower and honey that is spread on bread.

The bee collects the honey on the flower, which it then stores in the honey goiter, a special bag located in front of its stomach. The bee then flies back to the hive and empties the contents of the bag into the honeycomb. When the cell is full, it is covered with beeswax. Then the bees gather around the honeycomb and flap their wings to create air circulation and a sufficiently high temperature. This allows as much water as possible to evaporate from the honey and for the honey to ripen. When the comb is full, it is collected from the apiary and the wax used by the bees to close the cells is removed with a special fork. The combs are then loaded into the tap, which is then rotated to cause the honey to flow out of them through a strainer into a container. The emptied comb is returned to the apiary.

Some people mistakenly think that by emptying the comb we are harming the bees, as we are taking away the food they worked so hard for. The truth is that bee colonies become too strong when there is an overabundance of honey, and the result is that they create another queen and from one strong bee colony two weak bees are born. One bee family stays in the hive, while the other, together with the new queen, flies away in search of a new home. Such families usually end up in the forest, where they often do not survive due to difficult conditions and inadequate protection from the weather. Therefore, it is important to take the excess honey from the bees, and at the end of the season, always leave enough of it in the hives so that the bees have a supply of food for the winter.

After finishing the work, pour the honey into jars and sweeten yourself with it, take care of your health and use it in honey cosmetics .