From the Hive to the Jar

Honey comes from nectar that is produced by plants. Nectar is a raw substance and has a high moisture content, honey on the other hand must have a moisture content level below 20%. Because honey has such a low moisture content, it will not ferment and it keeps forever! Did you know? Edible honey has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs and is thought to be around 3000 years old.

Bees convert nectar to honey in their hive as winter stores of energy for when food sources are scarce. This provides the carbohydrate (sugar) component of a bees’ diet which is essential for growth and reproduction. Luckily for us, they make 2-3 times what they need however, we are still very careful when we harvest to leave enough for them.

Bees collect nectar by inserting their long tongue (proboscis) into the nectary of a flower and sucking out the nectar. They then store it in their honey stomach to transport it back to the hive. In the hive they regurgitate it and pass it over to the nurse bees (younger workers). These bees transport the honey to the honey supers and add enzymes to it that invert the sucrose into fructose and glucose. The nurse bees then spread the nectar over individual cell walls and fan it to evaporate the moisture content, and finally, it is capped over with beeswax to seal it from air.

When the honey flow (the time when there is the most nectar available for bees) is ending we add escape boards to our hives. These only allow the bees to go one way so once they leave the honey supers (boxes) they can’t come back. This is a method that causes no harm to the bees and allows us to take the honey supers from the hives without taking all the bees too!

Once the honey is harvested we do a bit of quality control, checking each frame’s quality, before we take our honey to extraction. At extraction, each frame is uncapped (the beeswax covering the honey cells removed) using the uncapping machine and then placed into a big drum which spins so that the raw honey is spun out of the frames. Once all the honey is collected up and the impurities such as wax and bee legs removed we receive our honey back in big drums.

At processing/ packaging the drums of honey are gently warmed to around the same temperature as the inside of a beehive. This is so that the honey will pour out of the drums. It’s then filtered again to remove any further impurities… but not so much that it would remove the pollens that provide many health benefits. Don’t be afraid if you find the odd spot still in your jar of honey, this is a sign that it’s a natural product and not been ultra filtered!

The raw honey is now packaged and the process of creaming begins for the rest.

Creaming is a very carefully controlled process to ensure that none of its properties are lost. Creaming honey speeds up and controls the granulation process that raw honey naturally goes through, essentially meaning that if done right creamed honey is just finely crystallised honey with nothing added or taken away from it.

Creaming honey can be done in a few different ways, some requiring heat and others not. All require a good seed/ starter honey. This is a small amount of already creamed honey that is added to the raw product to begin the crystallisation process. Ultimately, the quality of this honey determines the quality of the finished product.

Traditionally at Branch Creek we creamed our honey very manually. We received our seasons worth of honey back from extraction in 20L buckets, added ‘seeding/ starter honey’ and then stirred the honey using a paint mixer once or twice daily, until the honey creamed; a process which took a week or so.

Nowadays, our honey is processed at a small commercial facility. The team here are multi-generational experts at what they do, producing their own award winning honey’s. We feel very confident with them processing our honey; using a method similar to our traditional way but just on a larger scale.

They start with the seed/starter honey in a tank, slowly adding our raw liquid honey (up to two drums of approx. 600kg at a time) and stirring for up to one hour per day. As the crystals form they are broken up by the stirring to give you a finer crystal and smoother honey. This process repeats daily until the honey crystallises and creams which can take anywhere from two days to a week depending on the time of year, temperature and other external factors. This is a much faster process than how we used to do it and the result is a beautifully smooth creamy honey just perfect for spreading on your toast! The final step now is packaging!