How Do We Get Honey (by Louisa)

We have been harvesting honey! So today we learned a bit about how we get honey!

How do we get honey?

We get honey from bees. Bees get pollen from the flowers and then the bees go back to their hive with the nectar in their nectar sac. They give the nectar to the house bee and she chews it for half an hour and it turns into sugar. She puts this in the honeycombs, little hexagonal pockets and it turns into honey in there. When the pocket is full, the bee puts a lid of wax on the top. Then you can take the honey out.

Getting the Honey

Mbwilo, our guard, came at night time to get our honey. We all went out to watch (but didn't want to get too close to the bees). He had a net over him and wore rubber gloves. He made a smoky fire to smoke the bees out. Then he got all the honeycomb out of the hive and put it all in three big buckets. He brushed the bees off the combs with a rosemary branch.

Smoking out the bees

Honey in the honeycomb ... and lots of bees!

Brushing the comb with rosemary

 

The next day, we mashed up the honeycomb and then sieved the honey through a mosquito net. We hung the mosquito net up high with string and hung it over the bucket to let it drip into the bucket. It is still dripping!

 

I had honey toast for lunch. Do you like honey?  I love honey, it makes you funny. Mum thinks I've had too much honey!