Visiting a Beekeeper

Hello there, this is Radek.
I’m taking you to a bee farm today. You send us some questions here and there regarding honey. Opinions on how it’s made, how to use it, crystallizing, heating and more. That’s why we decided with Marky to take you to our chief supplier of this natural wonder. Mr. Petr Kořínek, who will share with you some interesting observations and experiences as a beekeeper. Please enjoy witnessing the beautiful craft that is beekeeping. By the way, Marky looks fantastic with the beekeeping hat and veil 🙂

Conversation outside near the hives.
P:…If you’re here and you’re not scared, I’m gonna open it up…

M:…alright…

P:…you can take a look…I got an already prepared stock of honey…

M:…I have never seen this in person, wow…

P:…there are no bees here, or maybe just a tiny amount

M:…I can see some, staring back at me….

P:…the covered parts are stocks of honey…

M:…oh yeah…

P:…this part was loaded…

M:…oh so they’re stocking honey for themselves?

P:…yeah…I’ll look for a better frame…this is a larva, bees will be born here..

M:…so how do i recognize a bee and a drone?

P:…drone is larger, not sure if I can find some here……Look here right of my hand a bee is born right now…

M:…here?

P:…no no, over here…

M:… oh there it is! Radi take a look, right in front of our eyes, a baby bee…

P:…she’s still kind of grey…

M:…I remember Martina saying that the small baby bees are completely grey…so we are witnessing a birth of bees or rather this one bee…Finally I got to meet a real drone…so Peter, I would love to know how is it that you have become a beekeeper, have you inherited the farm or did you fall in love with it? Like “this is the kind of thing I want to do” 🙂

P:… it’s kind of a coincidence actually, definitely did not inherit it… I worked part-time at a bee farm, that’s my first experience…at first I didn’t really like it, I was pretty scared…then I took real interest in it and I got myself my own hives…

M:…and these smaller boxes, what kind of bees are there?

P:…those are mating nucs..
M:…mating nucs?

P:…yeah so when I need to mate more bees, I take some of the bees and put them in 2 or 3 frames and put them into these boxes with bee larva. Bees develop a queen and before autumn comes around, these 2 boxes will be full of bees…

M:…so all of these are the nucs…

P:…here she is, i have marked it white, the queen bee…

M:…I see…she’s so big…

R:…these mating yards are in polystyrene, is there a special reason for that?

P:…it keeps warmth better than wood, these hives are in plastic and these are wood..

M:..this is plastic? I wouldn’t even know…

P:..for spring, polystyrene is definitely better, if the temperature goes to like 15 or 20°C the queens hatch and then if the temperature goes to -5°C bees have keep the warmth to about 35°C, in places with larvae, and this is harder to do in the wooden or plastic boxes…

P:…this is the cutout, they go down from this upper set and then don’t come back up anymore, I don’t even need to sweep the bees from the set and I just take it empty to honey house to drain…

M:…I see, I was struggling trying to imagine how they fly around the beehive back and forth up and down, or?

P:…yeah, they just go down and don’t come back up anymore…

M:…looking at you, you’re totally chill, you don’t need the net or anything like I do…

P:…sometimes I do…Most of the time I do wear the hat and veil… it’s pretty nasty for eyes and ears otherwise…now with autumn coming, it’s not so busy anymore, bees are minding each other and if they feel something they sting…
M:…I was just thinking, when I tend my garden and work on the lavender, bees react and I’m kinda taking their food away so to speak, they get pretty aggressive about that, so I was wondering can you recognize the anxiety in the bees, like can you tell when it’s better to put on the hat or something…

P:…right, I get an idea when I see how it opens…

M: I thank God for beekeepers, I was saying it earlier, it’s such a marvel. Without bees we would all be gone within 4 years or something… this world is connected in so many ways, and it’s not just about honey, but pollen and trees and other things …we have a lot to appreciate when it comes to bees…

P:…it’s said that honey is 10% of what a bee does, the rest is the distribution of pollen and all the other things bees do, so honey is really the smaller part of their life…

In the honey house, preparation room and basically the technical side of the farm.

P:…first we need to take off the lids from the frames with a knife or fork…then we put it into the centrifuge and that gets us the honey which is drained out afterwards…this honey is poured into a large vessel, here wax reaches the top and pure honey is drained from the bottom… if I’m putting the honey into jars, it’s filtered through thin sieves…

R:… I think you mentioned that old beekeepers used to do this differently…

P:..they used to drain the honey straight into jars from the centrifuge, they might have had a sieve there too, but despite that, some of the dirt from wax will remain, because cold honey will not go through the sieve easily… sometimes the honey can already start crystallizing somewhat in the hives, this crystallization gets into the jars and within a week is fully crystallized…

R:…people often talk about the idea that when honey is crystallized, it’s because there is refined sugar in it …

P:…nah, that’s a natural property of honey… I’m not sure where do people say this, maybe in cities but here in the villages, when older people buy their honey they specifically choose crystallized honey, because they are actually worried the honey has been too heated… in the shops they might heat it up to 80°C and then quickly cool it back down the reason for that being, the honey doesn’t crystallize as quickly and it’s easier to sell in this form…

R:..when we were coming back from our visit to Expres menu, we bought honey somewhere in northern Moravia and it was so thick it could be barely poured out of the jar… how come the honey can be so different with regards to color, texture consistency and such…

P:… it depends on what did the bees gather.. I assume dark honey would be pine honey… you can separate honeys into flower and pine honeys… flower honey is made from nectar and pine honey comes from aphids… with flower honey the color, flavor and fragrance depends on the kinds of flowers the bees tend to, and it also affects the sugars… each honey has different structure of sugars, glucose, fructose, even higher sugars can be found there…

R:… people tell us that refined sugar is added to honey, but I found out that they may be mistaking it with sugar being used to feed the bees, which is an entirely different topic right…

P:…true, in autumn months bees are fed with sugar… but we do it in a way, where what’s left is put above the hives, so that the bees can make full use of it during winter months…

R:….so it depends on how everyone tackles this issue… the additional feeding is not necessary… if someone does do it, does it affect the honey itself?…Or maybe it’s obvious it does affect it, but why is it done in the first place?
P:…you mean the additional feeding?… well, it’s because in the autumn months or beginning of august it’s the last draining (we don’t make pine honey here), you use sugar instead of honey, which the bees need to survive winter and spring…it’s basically a cheap solution…if the harvest isn’t good you need to let the bees keep the honey, we wouldn’t drain it in such case…
…when I was talking previously about bees, I mentioned that for a bee to hatch you need about 35°C of warmth, this temperature can be even higher during the summer, so for 2 or 3 months the temperature is sort of all over the place but it’s definitely very warm in there…

R:… and are you aware of any case where if you for example put honey into boiling tea, that it becomes toxic or anything like that?

P:…nah, only the beneficial properties are being diminished like the vitamins and such…if you managed to diminish everything completely it would just become sweet water and it wouldn’t be honey anymore…

I don’t know about you, but I loved it here. The energy of these amazing little creatures gives me peace but also invigorates me. It’s been a long time since I last waved my arms around in panic when i happened upon a bee, like I was taught once upon a time. And instead, I calmly watch the amazing perfection. I would like to express my and Marky’s gratitude to Mr. Petr Kořínek and his family for sharing a beautiful afternoon with us and an excellent treat that sweetens our lives. You can find a link to the website of their farm down below this video.

If you are watching this video somewhere other than our site, check us out too, right here www.healwithmeal.net . And leave a comment, like or whatever. It would mean a lot to us if you shared your opinions.

And most importantly, eat well and be well. 🙂