The Best Bee Products Highly Demanded In Kenya

Harvesting honey, beeswax and Propolis

 Honey is harvested at the end of a flowering season. The beekeeper selects those combs which contain ripe honey, covered with a fine layer of white beeswax. These combs are usually the outside-most ones. Combs containing any pollen or developing bees should be left undisturbed. Honey will keep a long time if it is clean and sealed in an airtight container, but will deteriorate rapidly and ferment if it has absorbed water. Preventing this from happening is crucial in honey harvesting.

 

Harvesting the combs

Harvesting should be carried out in the evening or the early morning. Gentleness is the key to successful colony manipulation, so learn to carry out this process swiftly but calmly to avoid upsetting your bees. 

        i.            Put on your protective clothing.

      ii.            Get your smoker, brush or quill, knife or hive tool, and a rust- proof container in which to put the honeycomb.

    iii.            Load your smoker, and puff some smoke gently around the hive for a few minutes. Wait a few more minutes, then puff smoke around the entrance holes.

    iv.            After puffing the smoke, open the lid.

      v.             Knock the top bars to see which of them have combs; they will sound heavier than empty ones.

    vi.            Use the knife or hive tool to remove the first bar from one end of the hive.

  vii.            Puff smoke gently into the gap to drive the bees to the other side of the hive.

viii.            Start removing the bars one by one, until you get to the first comb, which will be white and new. It may be empty or it may contain some ripened honey. Replace it and leave the comb for the bees to develop.

    ix.            Remove only the capped or partly capped combs, which will be quite heavy. Use a brush or feather to sweep any bees back into the hive.

      x.            Cut the comb off, leaving about 2cm for the bees to start building on again. Put the comb in a container and replace the top bar.

    xi.            Carryon harvesting until you come across a brood comb, which will be dark in colour and contain pollen too. Leave this honey for the bees.

  xii.            Start the process again at the other end of the hive.

xiii.            Close the hive carefully, replacing the lid.

 

How to Extract Honey

 The honeycomb can be simply cut into pieces and sold as fresh, cut comb honey. Alternatively, the honey and comb can be separated and sold as fresh honey and beeswax. It is important when processing honey to remember that it is hygroscopic and will absorb moisture, so all honey processing equipment must be kept perfectly dry. The most common traditional methods of honey extraction are squeezing or burning the combs. Burning the honeycomb is wasteful and makes the quality of both the wax and the honey inferior; it should be avoided at all costs. If your quantity of honey or financial resources are small, then squeezing the honey out by hand is probably the most viable option. The honey extracted by this method will have to be strained through several increasingly finer meshes to remove any bits of wax or debris, ending with something like muslin cloth. It is very important that this procedure be carried out hygienically, and that the honey is not left exposed to the air, where it will pick up moisture and deteriorate.  

Another good way of extracting honey from top-bar or movable frame hives is a radial or tangential extractor. This is a cylindrical container with a centrally-mounted fitting to support combs or frames of uncapped honey, and a mechanism to rotate the fitting (and the combs) at speed. The honey is thrown out against the side of the container and runs down to the bottom, where it is collected and then drained off with a tap. Most manufactured extractors are made to hold frames and have to be adapted to take comb from top bar hives. This is usually done by making wire baskets to hold the comb. The baskets can either lie flat horizontally, or be attached to the vertical frames and sit tangentially within the container. Top-bar combs in tangential extractors have to be spun twice, once on each side, to extract all the honey.  

The honey must be stored in airtight, non-tainting containers to prevent water absorption and consequent fermentation. If you want to sell your honey it would be helpful to add a label describing the source of the honey (for example sunflower, mixed blossom, tree honey), the country and district it was produced in, the weight or amount of honey in the container, and your name and address.

 

How Beeswax is extracted

The comb from which bees build their nest is made of beeswax. After most of the honey is possible is separated from the combs, the beeswax can be melted gently over moderately warm water (boiling water will ruin the wax) and molded into a block. 

 Another option for processing the wax is a solar wax melter. This appliance is easy to make and consists of a wooden box with a galvanized metal shelf with a spout, a bowl or container that sits under the spout, and a glass or plastic cover. When placed in the sun the temperature inside the box will melt down a comb and the wax will flow into a container inside the box. Any honey that was left in the combs will sink to the bottom; it is usually used for cooking or beer making as its taste is spoiled somewhat by this process.

 Beeswax does not deteriorate with age and therefore beekeepers often save their scraps of beeswax until they have a sufficiently large amount to sell. Many beekeepers still discard beeswax, unaware of its value. Beeswax is a valuable commodity with many uses in traditional societies: it is used in the lost-wax method of brass casting, as a waterproofing agent for strengthening leather and cotton strings, in batik, in the manufacture of candles, and in various hair and skin ointments. Beeswax is also in demand on the world market. For you as a farmer to sell your processed beeswax you should make it sparkling clean by re-heating it as little as possible.

How Propolis is extracted.

Bee Propolis is the dark sticky substance obtained in beehives. The bee Propolis is tapped using Propolis trappers which are placed strategically inside a beehive and bees will fill the crevices in the trappers with Propolis. Propolis is value added through simple industrial processes to produce bee healthy products such as Propolis tincture, Propolis Suspension and Propolis lip-balms.

At Native Beecare we provide market for the beeswax, honey and Propolis from the small holder farmers at competitive price in Makueni County.