HONEY PRODUCTION

Honey Production Business Tips

Honey production is an integral part of beekeeping. As a matter of fact, beekeeping is like running a business entity with a simple and solid management system. It consists of a factory of honey production with thousand of workers, your honey worker bees and yourself on top of the organization and concurrently holding the positions of factory, honey production section, marketing and sales manager, and maybe the finance and administration manager too.

As a business, your objective might be to produce and sell quality honey. Honey has been consumed by human since long ago and is very valuable with a lot of benefits. The use of honey has a very long history not only as a nutritious food but also as other meanings that reflects its significance in cultures and religions.

Honey production quality depends on many factors which are basically related to the source of nectar or floral source. Other factors that determine the quality of honey is processing and packaging. The floral source determines the taste and aroma of honey as well as its water content and clarity. Based on its floral source the honey production inputs can be derived from specific flower nectars or from unspecified origins, or blended after honey collection.

Most of the available honey sold in the market is blended honey or a mixture of several floral sources with different flavor, color, density and various area of origin. You can also find polyfloral honey or wildflower honey which is derived from the nectar of several flower types. Therefore you may find some inconsistency of this type of honey from season to season in its taste, aroma and flavor, depending on which flower is more dominant.

If you wish to produce monofloral honey, which is collecting honey that is derived from the nectar of a single type of flower, you need to manage that your honey bees has access to only one type of flower, which is quite a difficult task to do. As a matter of fact, you can not control all your bees, some will collect nectar from other flowers, and there is a great possibility that your monofloral honey may contain a small amount of nectar from other flower types.

Let us observe how the bees are involved in this honey production process from the collected nectar from flowers that surrounds their hive. A soon as the bees arrives in their hive, they will empty their fully stomach by regurgitating the nectar then swallow and ingest it again for several times until it gets partially digested. This is actually the transformation process from nectar to honey. The bees will do this regurgitating and ingesting together for several times until its reaches the wanted quantity which they put into the honey comb.

This newly stored nectar still contains a lot of water and some natural yeast that may cause the fermentation of the sugar content in the nectar. By nature the bees will fan their wings to produce an air stream above the honeycombs to facilitate the evaporation of water from the nectar. This produces a higher sugar concentration which will eventually prevent fermentation to occur. This is a natural process of honey production in a bee’s life, which then will be stored as food source during hard times like winter.

The task of a beekeeper is maximizing honey production by encouraging the bees to produce more honey than what will be needed by the bees. Such over production of honey will be beneficial for both the bees and the beekeeper.

At the end of a honey production process, you will get ripe honey which is a thick, sticky sweet liquid. It contains a lot of fructose and glucose with a smaller amount of maltose and sucrose. Although the common presentation of honey is the bottled liquid form, but there are other forms of honey which are subjected to various honey processing methods. The application of methods is fully the discretion of the beekeeper.

To mention some varieties that can be further developed: raw honey, strained honey, ultra-filtered honey, pasteurized honey, crystallized honey, ultra-sonicated honey, whipped honey, dried honey, chunk honey and comb honey. Each variety has its own benefit and purposes, which can be addressed to a certain market.

Well, with such many varieties of honey production, a beekeeper has a lot of challenges to fulfill some market needs and this of course, should be the job of you as a marketing and sales manager. Isn’t it?

Happy honey producing and marketing!

APIARY BEEKEEPING BUSINESS

Developing Your Apiary Beekeeping Business

Developing an apiary beekeeping business seems to be the right answer to the following question: “What should you do if your beekeeping hobby turns to be a profitable business with increasing demands for your quality honey?” There are two options, you just stay where you are and enjoy your hobby as a great activity, or you can think of something on how to expand your business. As you have done beekeeping for quite a long time, and you see that there are increasing demands with remarkable profits why not expanding your business? It is really a great opportunity to strive for.

You probably may ask yourself why think of an expansion plan, while you do not have enough space to put more beehives to look after additional bees. Or you probably do not find enough flowers or gardens in your neighborhood where your bees can get additional nectar. Or is there something else that holds you, may be your neighbors or your beekeeping license? Well, there are plenty of reasons that will lead you to a “status quo” situation. But here are some ideas that you might consider.

There are some beekeeping practices that have been applied till this moment, which is to rent a piece of land where you can use it as a bee yard or an apiary. An apiary is a place where you can put your beehives as many as you wish according to your plan. You can even pay the rent with some amount of honey that is produced in this apiary. In some instances a honey beekeeper can get paid by the farmer since they need the bees very badly to facilitate pollination.

You can work together with farmers who usually need the presence of bees to pollinate their crops. There are farmers who are willing to lend their land for free to beekeepers for the sake of bee pollination. You can make a long term deal with such farmer, and manage your beehives accordingly to the crop growing cycle. This looks like a good mutual benefit for you as a honey beekeeper and the farmer who needs the help of your honey bees, isn’t it?            

Now, let us move forwards and see how to choose a good site for your apiary. A good apiary should meet the following requirement:

Nearness to nectar sources. It should be definitely near a flowering field or crop. Bees are able to look for nectar within a distance of 3 km from their hives, but if they do not find any good stuff they are willing to travel up to 12 km in search for good nectar. If you place it too far, they might move and find another spot closer to the source, and your hives will be empty.

Temperature. Consider a place where the maximum temperature, especially during summer, isn’t extremely hot, since this may melt the bee wax inside the hive. If the bee wax melts, the bees are going to spend more time to cooling the wax by collecting more water than nectar. Please bear in mind that the melting point of bee wax is around 110ºF or 45ºC. High temperature tends to disturb the bees and get angry more easily.

Security of your beehives. Watch out for honey eating animals like the honey badger or ratel. If there are badgers in your place you should provide some extra protection by strapping your hive together using a strong baggage strap. You should also be aware of human thieves and provide the necessary protection.

Protection of passing people. If in case you have some traffic of passing people close to your apiary, it is best if you could place a high board fence with a minimum height of 6 feet. This is to avoid the bees to straightly attack passing people when flying out the hives, since they are forced to fly high above the fence and over the head of a passer.

To avoid somebody get hurt by your bees, make sure that any people, especially children, will not accidentally enter your apiary by posting some signs of precautions. 

Avoid windy places. Wind will encourage the bees to leave the hive and look for a better place. Beside that, the bees will create some blockage at the entrance using propolis and leaving some holes to maintain access. This narrow entrance will for sure slow down the bees activities. Another thing is that the bees will become less productive, since they will be spending more time on making the propolis rather than honey.

If you are serious to expand your beekeeping business, managing an apiary for honey beekeeping is a strategy to be considered. And time will come that you arrive at a point where you need to hire other people to help you in developing a successful business.

BEEKEEPING BUSINESS

Starting Your Beekeeping Business

Running a beekeeping business and being a beekeeper who manages honey bees is really an enjoyable job and with great rewards too. Just imagine how you can enjoy the sweet and delicious honey every day, while at the same time you’ll get the benefit of pollination from plants and flowers in nearby gardens. Actually, your hard working honey bees are doing the essential part of your job, the collection of honey.

You probably know very well a popular phrase that says “he works busy as a bee”. Yes indeed, bees are really hard workers. They collect nectar from surrounding areas that have flowers and put it back into the hives. It goes back and forth doing the same activities the whole day long. In spite of this hard working, they enjoy only a short lifetime of about 35 days. At the end of their lifetime, their wings become weak and they lost their value to the colony and simply die. What a pity bee.

So, why do bees collect honey so hard? They aim to store honey is to assure the availability of food supply during hard times, which is during autumn and winter when the flowers are not blooming. During summer, when the flowers bloom, the bees work hard to collect the honey in excessive amounts, even bigger than what they need and can consume. This will also be a good time for the beekeeper to harvest the honey and sell it at a profitable price.       

Beekeepers can sell the honey in two forms. The first one is the liquid honey. This honey is extracted form honey combs using a centrifuge which is called an extractor. The result is a clear and condensed liquid honey that is suitable for cooking or drink sweetener. The second form is the pieces of honey comb. Here the beekeeper sells the original pieces of the wax comb that is made by the bees. This form is a kind of enjoyment to some people that seek for natural honey flavor.   

Honey comes in different colors and flavors, since it might be originated from different flowers with different smells. Thus the color, taste and smell are determined by the kind of flower the bees are collecting nectar from.

Soil chemistry is also another factor that establishes the taste and color of honey. Flowers that are planted in dry and alkali soils like alfalfa are more likely to produce whiter to clearer honey. While flowers from a more acid soil like buckwheat produces a darker color of honey   

Another factor that determines the color and taste of honey is the quality of the honey comb made by the bees. Different quality may produce different honey color such as golden to red color.

When it comes to producing a commercial honey product make sure that you follow the rules of proper processing, labeling and handling of food products as stipulated by your state and federal regulations. Please be aware that beekeeping is also a real business with a set of regulation from your local government that you as a beekeeper should comply to. 

Being a competitive product, honey products need some touch of marketing management to be applied for the success of your business. Beekeeping may be your hobby in the beginning, but with your success in quality honey production, your hobby turns to be a profitable business. This is where you should treat your beekeeping hobby as a real business. Go for it, and be a success!