Bees and Honey.

We have a small apiary - some 90 hives, around it. My father has been a bee-master for many years, and you would think I must have got used to the bees. Still they amaze me every time.
They are such hard-working creatures that can not be compared to anything else in the living nature!

Striking is the fact that the working bee in the period when honey is being intensively stocked up - that is in summer - lives only for 1 month! Oh boy, they do really work at full stretch...

And also their natural instinct of swarming - it is the top of pure unselfishness!

Now let me tell you in brief how they do all this. The swarming period is usually end of June - beginning of July. The whole bee family makes a decision about swarming, and they start getting ready for this important step. They stop feeding the queen bee, so she gets slim and can come out of the hive, they lay grubs for future baby bees and the new queen, stock food for them for the starting days. 

When the first baby bees and the new queen hatch, then it's time for the old family to leave the hire.

Still it is their process of honey yield that remains the most unusual thing for me

Well, with our own process everything is clear. This is how we do it. 

Take the honey frames from the hives.  

With special knives and forks we open up the honeycombs. 

We use special honey pumps to pump the honey.

And then all this golden goodness gets poured into cans.