Raw Honey from African or European Bee (with plans to attract a new hive)

Speaking of bees, the other day I received a gift from the regular honey lady. She lives in the next town over and sells honey, usually by the 5-gallon bucket. The problem is that often times the honey is actually mostly sugar and water heated together to form honey-like syrup. Needless to say, I bought 5 gallons of sugar water honey from her a few months ago. Soon after, I realized that it certainly was not pure honey. I presented this to the honey lady and she was certainly apologetic.



As an act of good measure, she soon brought colleen and I a gift: some pure raw honey, still in the comb of what I believe is an African bee species. Since then, we have resolved only to buy this type of raw honey from her.

Today, she brought this beautiful set of honeycombs, filled to the brim with dank dank honey. For only $2.50, she happily sold them to me. Ridiculous.



The plan is to get the honey out while preserving the integrity of the combs, basically by turning them upside down while suspended above a tray to catch the honey. When the combs are mostly empty, I plan to build a small wooden box with a lid and put the combs in the box, vertically. With the left over honey, the comb structure, and the smell of the beehive, there is a chance we can attract some worker bees, which will proceed to make a queen and begin producing more honey, so as to take advantage of the prebuilt little home we will have provided.

Bee Keeping: The First Harvest

Today, I decided to prepare the hive for the division next week, by putting it in a better box and moving it into a more accessible spot where the division process can be done more easily. In the process of moving the hive, I made my first harvest of honey. To harvest, basically you just have to ply the hive away from the box, as the bees tend to connect their hive to the inside walls. Using a machete, I cut around the inside of the box and lifted up the hive.



The honey from these local stingless black bees is different from normal European or African bee honey. The taste is slightly bitterer; it has more medicinal properties, and is typically darker than usual honey, as well. Also, as opposed to honeycomb storage, these bees store their honey in little sacs mad out of wax and about the diameter of a penny. There is also a ton of bee pollen to harvest, which is an incredible health and magic power food. When harvesting, it is important to leave about half of the sacs for the bees to eat off of, as they make more honey. Sadly, these bees make considerably less honey than European or African species, both of which are more common as they have been selected for commercial apiculture.



A note I want to make is that I think I waited too long to make the harvest. Only about a third of the sacks had honey in them, while the majority appeared as though they once held honey, but it was either eaten or leaked out. As you can see, there are many sacs, but only about a third of them are filled with honey.

Considering the limited quantity of honey provided, as well as the ease of harvesting, and the high frequency at which I suspect it should occur, I have a new strategy for making these bees produce a good amount of honey for daily consumption. I say one should strive to obtain 8 hives through division, taking likely a year or more to get 8 from 1 starter hive. Then, harvest two hives each week, which I suspect could provide about ½ liter of honey. After the first two are harvested they should rest for one month, while you are harvesting from the other 6, 2 per week. Once all 8 have been harvested, the first two should be ready for another harvest. Down with sugar!

Stingless Black Bee of the Highlands of Guatemala

So my good friend Charlie, at La Cambalacha, came into a hive of Stingless Black Bees. A local man found the nest in the mountains and brought it down to Charlie. After sitting untouched for several years, a beekeeper from Canada came to our town and agreed to help us divide the hive into two and build some boxes that are fit for holding this type of bee.



The division process is very basic, basically involving a machete, which is used to slowly cut the hive in two. When there are two separate pieces, one should stay in the first area and the other piece needs to be moved at least 500 meters away. This is so the piece of the hive that does not have a queen will be encouraged to start making a new queen for their hive. If the two pieces remained close together, all of the bees would just go to the piece of hive that has the original queen, leaving the other piece to rot. Next week, we plan to do another hive division. My friend Terri, who is helping us start our MILPA, has agreed to make new boxes for the division process in exchange for one of the hives. Thus, I will put up another post with pictures and more detailed information regarding hive division and also bee box design.



As for precaution, because they are stingless, I did not use too many precautions in terms of netting or smoke. I basically put a hood on tightly tied and a t-shirt across my nose and mouth. The bees do not sting, but they pinch and they also tend to climb into your ears, nose and mouth.

The hive was divided about 2 months ago and since then, my piece has sat in a basic cardboard box under the shade of a few lime trees. I just built a simple roof for them to provide a bit more shade and protection from rain, as they cannot get wet. They actually seemed very happy in the cardboard box. Within two weeks of being there, they completely attached their mud hive to all sides of the box. They seem to be quite happy there and I have not bothered them really at all since then.