Honeybee_ Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper - C. Marina Marchese [35]
A younger house bee accepts the nectar from the foraging bee by sucking it out of her honey sac through her mouth. These house bees mix the nectar with their own enzyme, called invertase, which breaks down the sugary nectar, or sucrose, into glucose and fructose, making it possible for the bees to digest. The nectar is then placed in the honeycomb cells. Worker bees inside the hive fan the liquid nectar with their wings, which helps to evaporate the extra moisture and bring the water content of the nectar down to 18 percent. This process ripens the nectar into honey. Honey harvested before it is ripened, with a moisture content higher than 18 percent, can cause the naturally occurring yeast cells in honey to ferment. Fermented honey tastes a bit like vinegar and is exceedingly runny. Somehow the bees instinctively know when the nectar is at the correct moisture content and the cells containing it are ready to be capped with beeswax. Once the bees have filled all the cells within a frame with honey, they cover the cells with pure-beeswax cappings, creating what I call the beautiful stained-glass-window effect.
A WORKER BEE GATHERING POLLEN AND NECTAR
A HOUSE BEE ACCEPTING NECTAR FROM A FORAGING BEE
HONEY SHALLOWS
During the first year of beekeeping, your bees will be busy drawing out the hive’s twenty frames of beeswax foundation into cells for brood rearing and honey and pollen storage. The worker bees excrete wax from their glands and use it to build cells on the foundation inside each frame. Once the beeswax cells are drawn out, the queen will start laying eggs in the center of the frame as the worker bees begin filling up others at the top with nectar for making honey. As the queen lays eggs, the colony will grow in number, building a strong population of worker bees. An enterprising colony of honeybees will make far more honey than it needs to survive. Honeybees will naturally continue making honey as nectar and space are available. You do not always have control over the nectar availability, but you can control the space and give your bees extra room to make honey.
You should never remove honey from the hive’s two deeps—the two main boxes are where the bees live and raise brood—because that’s the honey the bees eat and feed to their larvae. Instead, you place a third box, called a shallow super, on top of the hive body, for the bees to fill up with excess honey. You can then harvest the honey from this extra space without disturbing the main hive body. This box is called shallow because it is shallower in height than the hive body where the queen lays her eggs and brood is raised, and super because it goes on top, or superior, to the deep boxes. These boxes are also sometimes referred to as honey supers.
Inside a shallow super there are nine frames, instead of the typical ten found in the deeps. Each frame is 5⅜ inches deep and holds a piece of beeswax foundation similar to the frames inside the hive body. Having nine frames, rather than ten, gives the bees more space in between the frames to build up the wax cells, allowing them to build the cells to a maximum depth.
To prevent the queen from walking up to the honey shallow to lay her eggs, there is a piece of equipment called a queen excluder. This flat wooden frame has a grid in the center that acts like a fence; it has just enough space for the smaller worker bees to pass through and carry their nectar for honey making. The chubbier drones will not fit through the queen excluder, either. If you choose to use a queen excluder, place it on top of the two brood chambers with the shallow super on top. You