From Flower to Flame (Or How Beeswax Candles are made from Flowers)   The honeybees harvest nectar from flowers, return to the hive with this sweet floral essesence and concentrate it into honey.     The Honeybees consumes the honey and with their wax glands on the sides of their bodies they transform the honey into wax scales. Workers around 6-12 days old can produce wax scales in their four pairs of wax glands. The glands are concealed between the inter-segmental membranes, but the wax scales produced can be seen, usually even with naked eyes. The scales are thin and quite clear. After workers chew them up and add saliva, it becomes more whitish. These wax scales are used by the honeybees to make honeycombs to store their honey in.     The beekeepers harvest this honey and during the extracting process the capping's (the ends of the hexagonal cells) are cut or scraped off allowing the honey to come out.   These capping's are melted, cleaned from debris and formed into bulk beeswax.   The candlemaker refines this wax and crafts it into beautiful candles. Candle Dipping at Honeyflow Farm Wicks for 6 pairs of candles are on a frame and dipped into hot wax.   6 pairs of candles half finished. The frame is split in half & only 3 pairs are now dipped.   The candles are hanging in a rack to cool between dips.   The finished product.       The Candle Shop The On Line Candle Store The Honey Farm A Year in the Bee Yards

The Honey Harvest Continues

 

Typical honeybee colonies with honey supers on top.	This colony has comb honey supers on it.

September is the month that we first begin to take our honey crop off. Most of what is harvested now goes directly to our sales stand or to road side markets.

 

In October and November the rest of the crop is harvested and stored in barrels. The picture shows frames of honey going into our extractor. Click here for more extracting pictures.

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEES IN WAR TIME

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEES IN WAR TIME
by Roger Sutherland - SouthEastern Michigan Beekeepers Association

(Part II of a two part series)

BEES AT SEA

From a later era comes another story (of questionable truth) about bees and pirates. According to the story, a 17th- century-merchant ship, bound for Cuba and Mexico, sailed from Barcelona carrying bees which had established a hive under the upper deck near the bow. The crew took the presence of the beehive as a good omen, and let it alone. Their belief seem justified by fair winds and a quick trip through the Atlantic Ocean chill, which kept the bees quiet. In the warmer waters near the Caribbean, the bees continued to cooperate and merely sortied from their hive for short distances.

Near the ship’s first destination, pirates struck. Damp powder prevented the merchantman’s crew from firing their guns, a problem the pirates did not have. The merchantmen took several poundings from the pirates’ cannons, including one in the ship’s bow. The pirate vessel closed and the buccaneers prepared to board at the bow of the merchantman. The vibration of the cannon ball in the bow, followed by the collision of the two hulls, understandably set off the bees. The pirates found themselves under attack from an unanticipated enemy. They cast off and quickly pulled away. Falling to their knees, the merchantmen’s crew thanked god for their deliverance.

As the crew enjoyed liberty ashore at Santiago de Cuba, the bees gathered pollen from the exotic flowers of Cuba. Convinced of the power of the bees, the sailors were concerned when some to the heavily laden bees fell into the water. So a canvas platform was prepared for the bees to land on before their makeshift hive’s entrance. The ship then continued on without incident to its Mexican landfall.

BACK ON LAND, YEARS LATER

During the Civil War at Antietam, attacking Federal troops advancing through a farmyard were routed, not by the heavy gunfire they faced, but by enraged bees shattered by Confederate artillery fire. There’s also a well-known case of British troops, in action in German East Africa during WW1, encountering maddened bees, but, as at Antietam, it appears accidental.

During the Vietnam War, Viet Cong guerrillas were masters of improvised weaponry, and before attacking, were known to lob 30 or more nests of hornets and wasps into military outposts. They also set up ingenious booby traps, placing nests, with firecrackers attached, along trails. When an enemy patrol walked past a nest, a patient VC would set off the firecracker.

FROM WEAPONS TO CAUSING WAR
On a few occasions, bees have been less the weapon than the cause of war or near war. There is a tale in Ireland, that Congal, the king of Ulster, was stung in the eye and blinded by a bee during a visit to the home of Domnall. The supporters of Congal Caech (One-Eye) demanded retribution—the eye of Domnall’s firstborn son. Domnall quickly ordered the bee hive destroyed, hoping the gesture might satisfy the Ulsterman. It did not. Ulster went to war against Domnall but lost.

THE “HELPER” BEE
Aside from military uses, there are instances in the historical record where bees helped civilians. For example, a group of nuns in Beyenburg (Beetown in English), Germany, drove off a band of robbers by releasing bees into their convent yard before seeking cover.

Another story tells how a Swiss beekeeper smuggled a cargo of fine Italian honey into Switzerland. He had an Italian beekeeper park a stash of honey right at the border. The Swiss took his own beehives and set them about 1,000 yards away. The bees went straight for the available honey and took it back to their hive, 200 pounds of it.

Today, bees are being examined as a possibly cheap and effective way to clear deadly minefields. Landmines are a cheap weapon in war, but they are usually left in place after the shooting stops. Worldwide, huge tracts of productive land are unusable, too dangerous to clear because of their mines.

Bees may provide the astonishing answer to the problem. At Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico, and at the University of Montana, researchers hope to make bees into biological mine detectors. They are trying to train the bees to respond to the odor of TNT, the primary landmine components, as if it’s food, and then track the bees into minefields with tiny rice-sized radio tags attached to the bees’ bodies. Mowgli would be thoroughly confused by the technical aspects of the proposal, but he would need no convincing of the martial value of the Little People of the Rocks.

FINAL NOTE

Recently – July 2003, someone entered a restroom of a department store and released a number of honey bees. In the ensuing pandemonium, with clerks and guards running all over, the person who released the bees, a thief, made off with a number of stolen goods.

Part I of this series .....

 

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Honeyflow Farm
4939 Mill Rd.    PO Box 275
Dryden, Michigan 48428
(810) 796-2344 (Phone & Fax)

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