Tag Archive for: Honey

Honey vs. Sugar for Athletes: A Sweet Showdown

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Athletes know the importance of fueling their bodies during grueling workouts and competitions. That’s why sports drinks and energy gels, packed with sugar, electrolytes, and other performance-enhancing ingredients, have become staples in nearly every athlete’s toolbox. But what if there was a natural, healthier alternative that could actually outperform these conventional options?

Enter honey. This golden nectar, beloved for its taste and versatility, turns out to be a hidden weapon in the athlete’s arsenal. While the global market for sports drinks and energy gels stands at a staggering $28 billion and $500 million respectively, honey offers a compelling combination of benefits that make it a serious contender for the top spot.

The Science Behind the Buzz:

Both sports drinks and energy gels typically rely on sucrose, a simple sugar that provides a quick burst of energy. However, this burst is often followed by a dreaded crash, leaving athletes feeling sluggish and depleted. Honey, on the other hand, throws a one-two punch with its unique composition. It contains both glucose and fructose, sugars that the body absorbs differently:

  • Glucose: This readily available sugar provides an immediate energy boost, just like sucrose. Think of it as the first responder in your body’s energy crisis.
  • Fructose: This slow-burning sugar is a marathon runner, delivering sustained energy over a longer period. It’s like having a built-in backup battery that keeps you going when the initial glucose rush fades.

This dual action of honey ensures a longer-lasting, more consistent energy supply compared to pure sugar. Studies have shown that honey can improve athletic performance in various ways, including:

  • Reduced fatigue: Honey’s sustained energy release helps athletes push harder for longer, delaying the onset of fatigue.
  • Increased endurance: By keeping blood sugar levels stable, honey prevents the dreaded energy crashes that can derail performance.
  • Improved glycogen replenishment: Glycogen is the body’s primary fuel storage for muscles. Honey helps replenish glycogen stores more effectively after exercise, aiding recovery.

Beyond the Basics:

Honey’s advantages extend beyond its sugar composition. Unlike sports drinks and gels, which are often packed with artificial ingredients, honey is a natural product. It contains small amounts of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that can further benefit athletes:

  • Vitamins: B vitamins, essential for energy metabolism, are naturally present in honey.
  • Minerals: Electrolytes like potassium, crucial for muscle function and nerve transmission, are found in honey.
  • Antioxidants: These compounds help combat exercise-induced oxidative stress and promote recovery.

And honey comes with its own delicious flavor, eliminating the need for artificial sweeteners and colorings.

DIY or Premade? You Choose:

The best part? You can easily incorporate honey into your sports nutrition routine. Make your own energy gels by mixing honey with a sodium-potassium supplement and store them in portable plastic bags. Or, opt for the convenience of pre-packaged honey sports gels like those from Honey Stinger, which offer a variety of natural and effective formulations.

 

So, the next time you reach for that sugary sports drink or gel, remember the power of the humble honeybee. This natural wonder offers a delicious, healthy, and performance-enhancing alternative that can help you achieve your athletic goals without compromising your well-being. Give honey a try, and you might just discover your new secret weapon for conquering your next workout or competition.

Buckwheat Honey & Christmas Cookies

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At Wildflower Meadows, our friends and customers often ask us if we have any extra buckwheat honey for Christmas cookies.  Many honey connoisseurs insist that dark, rich, buckwheat honey is perfect for baking.

Buckwheat has a strong, distinctive flavor that is often described as malty or earthy.  It is dark and is often considered a “baking honey.”  Bakers use buckwheat honey for Christmas cookies, but here are some other tips for using buckwheat honey:

    • Add it to tea or coffee for a sweet and flavorful boost.
    • Spread it on toast or pancakes for a healthy and delicious breakfast.
    • Add it to smoothies or yogurt for a nutrient-rich snack.
    • Use it as a natural cough suppressant.

There are two main types of buckwheat plants: common buckwheat and tartary buckwheat.  Common buckwheat is the most prevalent type of buckwheat plant grown in the United States. It is a tall, erect plant with heart-shaped leaves and white, pink, or purple flowers. Common buckwheat is grown for its seeds, which are used to make buckwheat groats, noodles, and other foods. It is also grown as a cover crop, which means that it is planted to improve the soil and suppress weeds. Common buckwheat can be found in many parts of the United States, but it is most typically found in the Midwest and Northeast.

Tartary buckwheat flowers are white or pink, while common buckwheat flowers are white, pink, or purple. This is the type of buckwheat that our bees visit at Wildflower Meadows.  Tartary buckwheat is a smaller type of buckwheat plant with narrower leaves and white or pink flowers. Tartary buckwheat is not as common as common buckwheat, but it is grown in some parts of the United States, especially the West. This is the type of buckwheat that our bees visit at Wildflower Meadows.  The nectar from both types of buckwheat flowers is used to make honey. However, buckwheat honey made from tartary buckwheat is typically darker and has a stronger flavor than buckwheat honey made from common buckwheat.

Tartary Buckwheat

Besides being delicious, Buckwheat honey is a good source of antioxidants, including flavonoids and phenolic acids. Antioxidants help protect your cells from damage caused by free radicals. Free radicals are unstable molecules that can damage cells and contribute to the development of diseases such as cancer and heart disease.  Buckwheat honey is also a good source of minerals, including iron, magnesium, and potassium. Iron is important for red blood cell production, magnesium is important for muscle function, and potassium is important for heart health.

A Honey-Bound Colony

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Who isn’t overjoyed with a beehive that’s filled with honey? Sometimes, however, there can be too much of a good thing. When a hive fills up with honey, and the bees continue to forage and plug all the extra space with even more honey, the bees face a real problem. So where will they store all this new honey if the hive is already full or near full capacity? Even worse, what if a honey flow is still in the works and fresh nectar continues to pour in rapidly?

Bees naturally like to store honey on the edges of their hive, as the sides and the top are their favorite places for honey. They also like to leave the central portion of the hive free from honey so that they have open space for brood rearing. The honey on the outside provides a natural layer of insulation. It leaves the center region of the hive available for egg-laying and brood-rearing. If all is going well, there typically is an equal balance of honey and brood in a beehive, with the insulating honey on the outside and warm brood on the inside.

When bees in a hive run out of open space to pack in new nectar, they really have no place else to turn other than to creep into the brood area. As the foraging bees in the colony begin to use the only available open space for offloading nectar—the central brood chamber—the beehive becomes out of order. This means that over time the queen’s area to lay eggs keeps reducing to the point where she finds less and less space to do her thing.

Honeybees never stop foraging. Even when their hive is full of honey, the bees can’t help themselves! They keep going, bringing in more and more honey. This means that unless the honey flow slows down or the bees somehow have more space, they will quickly encroach their brood area. In most cases, to resolve this problem, the bees’ instinct will be to swarm.

As a beekeeper, allowing a colony to become honey-bound and wanting to swarm is bad beekeeping. There is no reason for this to happen. As soon as a beekeeper becomes aware of a strong honey flow or the beginning stages of a honey flow, the beekeeper should provide sufficient space for the bees to store the honey. They can do so by removing honey frames or by adding an empty super.

Did you know that a beekeeper can even create honey-bound conditions by over-feeding? Sometimes, we have seen beekeepers go overboard with supplemental syrup feeding during a dry spell. This leads to the same effect, even without a natural honey flow! The bees store this abundance of syrup, so the entire brood area gets clogged. If this happens during the late summer or fall, when the bees might not be tempted to swarm, the bees shut down brood rearing due to the lack of space. The result is a colony that naturally shrinks its population for no other reason than being honey-bound and having no brood space.

How Many Frames Should be in a Langstroth Beehive?

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When it comes to the standard beehive, known as the Langstroth beehive, beekeepers have two box sizes available to choose from – an 8-frame and a 10-frame box. The 10-frame is the standard box that most beekeepers use. The 8-frame box has the same function as the 10, but it is narrower, lighter, and easier to handle. This is an excellent option for beekeepers who may struggle to lift a heavy 10-frame beehive when it is full of honey.

This seems straightforward enough, except that many beekeepers – especially commercial beekeepers – use 9 frames. Why is that?

Honey producers sometimes choose to use 9-frames in a 10-frame box to create extra free space for their bees to fill in with more honey. Nine frames, counterintuitively, can often result in a higher honey yield than if the bees worked a box with 10 frames. This is because with 9 frames there is more space per frame to pack in honey.  In a good honey flow, the frames in a 9-frame setup become fat and heavy with honey.

Many beekeepers also prefer to use 9-frames because it provides extra room for handling and removing the frames, whereas 10-frame setups can be tightly spaced and sometimes challenging to work with.

While a 9-frame setup has the advantage of maximizing honey production, the extra space between frames, if not evenly distributed, can be a disadvantage. Precise spacing is very important to honeybees. The space that they inhabit between their honeycombs is a universally standardized distance called bee space. Bee space needs to be larger than 4.5mm and less than 9.0mm — no matter what. Honeybees will not tolerate any space outside of this range. If the space between combs is less than 4.5mm the bees will close the gap, usually sealing it with propolis. If the gap is wider than 9mm, the bees will build an additional honeycomb to bring the gap back to the acceptable and precise space that they desire.

Because of how it is designed, a 10-frame box naturally spaces the frames properly. With 9-frames, however, it’s important to consider proper spacing. Beekeepers need to avoid creating large gaps between the frames that are wider than the bee space. Large gaps will cause the bees to build comb between the frames which will create an unnecessary mess. Most beekeeping supply companies sell metal frame spacers that create the perfect size gaps due to the spacing issue that can be caused by using 9-frames. These spacers are made to hold nine frames perfectly within bee space.

So, when would a beekeeper use all 10 frames?

First, when building out a new foundation, nearly all beekeepers will use 10 frames, since frames containing only foundation are particularly thin and ideally fit 10 to a box. Pollinators, bee breeders and many hobbyists also usually utilize all 10 frames. Using 10 frames allows 10% more capacity for brood laying than 9 frames would. At Wildflower Meadows, since we are more focused on queen and bee breeding than honey production, we prefer to use 10 frames per box. This keeps things simple and allows our queens the maximum amount of real estate to lay both worker and drone brood.

Harvesting Honey Supers

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When it comes time to harvest honey – that magical moment that you have been waiting for! – there are several methods available to get the job done. While no one method is necessarily better than another, some methods are better suited to hobbyists, whereas others are more appropriate for commercial or larger-scale beekeepers.

The basic goal of honey harvesting is to separate the bees from the honey and to remove a honey super off the beehive without taking any bees with it. The bees store honey in the super – it’s where they cure and maintain the honey. In any strong honeybee colony, there will be bees inside working on tasks such as maintaining the temperature of the colony and building beeswax to coat and preserve the frames of honey. Your goal when harvesting is to clear them out so you are not carrying bees back to your house or facility.

The first and most commonly used method of removing the honey super is with what is known as a fume board. It is used by both hobbyists and commercial beekeepers alike, including us here at Wildflower Meadows. (The beekeeper in the photo is gathering his fume boards.)  A fume board is typically coated with a chemical repellant that drives the bees downward, away from the frames of honey. It’s placed on top of the honey super, clearing the box of bees below.

If you are a backyard beekeeper and only have one or two honey supers to harvest, another simpler method is to use a basic bee brush. A bee brush is an inexpensive and invaluable tool used by all beekeepers, which works great if you only have a small amount of honey to harvest.  When using a bee brush, simply pull the honey frames out one by one and gently brush the bees away. This method is more time-consuming than other methods, but it is perfectly effective for a small-scale hobbyist.

There is one thing you should be cautious of when using a bee brush, however. If you have not placed a queen excluder below your honey super, there is always the risk that the queen may have wandered up into the honey super. You do not want to brush a queen honeybee and risk potential injury to her abdomen or damage to her sensitive reproductive system. If you are not using a queen excluder and are brushing bees off your honey frames, you will want to look for the queen on the frames you are pulling first. If you find the queen, it would be best to carefully place her back into the hive by gently picking her up by her wings or thorax.

Another popular honey harvesting method used by hobbyists is using a device called a hive escape board. This is a one-way entrance that allows bees to fly out of the honey super but not back inside. This is an easy and stress-free way of clearing bees out of a honey super, however, it is time-consuming, usually requiring at least 24 hours to be effective.

We have experimented with various escape boards over the years, but generally have been disappointed. The main disadvantage of an escape board is that the honey super itself must be in pristine condition, with no holes or cracks where the bees can reenter.  Sometimes the bees will escape through the escape board and simply reenter through a nearby hole! Or worse, the bees escape through the board, only to have robber bees enter through a hole, starting a robbing episode.  Another concern with escape boards can be that ants and small hive beetles can quickly gain the upper hand as bees disappear from the super. In a healthy colony, guard bees are guarding the honey for a reason. If they are drained out of the honey super with an escape board, there will be few or no guard bees remaining to protect against infiltrators, leaving pests free to run amok.

Many commercial beekeepers who have thousands of boxes of honey to harvest, have no time for brushing frames, using escape boards, or often even for fume boards. Instead, some of these no-nonsense beekeepers choose to go for the most efficient and speediest method of honey harvesting – the bee blower.

A bee blower is basically a glorified leaf blower that literally blows the bees right out of the box!   While some mechanical blowers are specifically marketed for beekeeping, a beekeeper could literally use an actual leaf blower to blow bees during honey harvesting. Beekeepers who use blowers typically tip a honey super on its side before they powerfully blow the bees right out of the super, either in the direction from top to bottom, or bottom to top.

Although this is fast, efficient, and effective, it also is loud and obnoxious. Bee blowers quickly destroy the natural ambiance of an apiary and have the unfortunate side effect of making bees, (and peaceful beekeepers alike) angry and annoyed. Realistically, bee blowers are another method where beekeepers should use queen excluders. Without a queen excluder, the queens could be blown all across an apiary and lost for no reason!

Eucalyptus Honey

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While California is well known for its picturesque palm trees, one can’t help but also notice the multitude of eucalyptus trees that seemingly sprout up everywhere. You might think that eucalyptus could even be the state tree, but there is no unseating the majestic redwoods that have deservedly earned that honor. Nevertheless, eucalyptus can be found in abundance throughout much of California, especially in the coastal and temperate areas of the state, where Wildflower Meadows is located.

Many different kinds of eucalyptus can be found around our apiaries – so many that there’s no keeping count. Some are large and sprawling; others are smaller and shapelier. Some have dark green leaves; others are light green. Eucalyptus is not technically just one tree, it’s actually a genus that includes over seven hundred species of flowering trees. Most species of eucalyptus are native to Australia, not the U.S., but they were introduced in California in the late 1700s.

From a beekeeper’s perspective, eucalyptus is gold. Nearly all the trees blossom with rich nectar-producing flowers. Plus, with all the different species, the flowering is varied and staggered over many months. Some species blossom in the summer, some in autumn, and some in the winter. It’s hard to imagine why a tree would blossom in the winter, but many beekeepers surmise that certain types of eucalyptus trees, being Australian natives, never abandoned their Australian seasonality.

Most species of eucalyptus have fluffy white, cream, yellow, pink, or red flowers. The flowers are a little unusual, however, making them easily recognizable. They get their fluffy appearance from a large display of stamens, instead of petals. Some are pretty to look at, others are not particularly attractive from a human perspective. Nevertheless, from the bees’ perspective, nearly all eucalyptus flowers are a treat! Eucalyptus blossoms are not necessarily known for being a rich pollen source for bees, but they do produce nectar – and often lots of it.

Although the leaves of eucalyptus plants are well known for their powerful essential oils – which are used for pharmaceutical purposes, disinfecting, insect repellent, flavoring, and fragrances – the nectar from the blossoms doesn’t quite deliver exactly the same flavor. The honey does, however, contain the eucalyptol compound, which gives it a somewhat medicinal, distinctive taste along with some healing properties.

Historically, eucalyptus honey has been used to treat coughs, common colds, congestion, and respiratory diseases due to its anti-inflammatory properties. Its antibacterial properties also make it helpful for treating minor cuts and burns. Eucalyptus honey promotes relaxation when consumed or when added to a running bath as well. The honey has a beautiful dark, reddish amber color and can be a great addition to food, beverages, or simply eaten from the jar.

Valentine’s Day as A Beekeeper

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Did you know that honeybees are a symbol of love and romance? That means that as a beekeeper, you’ve already got the inside track to help you celebrate the most romantic holiday of the year. So, skip the box of chocolates this Valentine’s Day and try one of these ideas for your bee-loved instead.

Nothing says Valentine’s Day like the gift of self-care. If your sweetheart is the kind of person who loves the thought of a DIY gift, try your hand at a milk and honey bath bomb.  They’ll appreciate your effort, especially when they feel how silky and soft it leaves their skin.

If you want to treat your queen bee like royalty, a beeswax candle is a perfect gift to show her what she means to you. Every woman loves the warmth and romance a candle creates in the home—the same feeling your relationship brings her. The natural beeswax candle will create an ambiance and fill her space with faint aromas of soft, musky honey.

If your partner has a sweet tooth, why not get some honey for your honey for St. Valentine’s? Honey is a delicious and versatile addition to breakfast in bed. Whether you whip up some pancakes, French toast, hot oatmeal, or fruit salad, your partner will love it topped off with a generous serving of sweet honey.

If you’re ready to get a head start on your summer romance, now is the best time to plant seeds for flowers—for your bees and your romantic partner later in the year. There’s just something special about homegrown flowers rather than buying a pre-arranged bouquet. Just place them in a vase on the table with a beeswax candlelit dinner to take your experience to the next level.

And if you’re single this Valentine’s Day, that’s okay! Just go on Bumble. You’re already a beekeeper and will fit right in! What more reason do you need to get out there and enjoy the season of love?

Why Does Honey Crystalize?

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As both beekeepers and honey lovers, we’ve all run into jars of honey that have turned from liquid gold into a solid or semi-solid chunk of crystal.  Whether this happens in a person’s pantry or on a store’s shelf, honey consumers sometimes believe that something must have gone wrong with the honey to turn it into this strange state.

Actually, the tendency for honey to crystalize is a perfectly normal feature of high-quality honey.  In fact, if honey does not crystalize, it can often be seen as a red flag that perhaps the honey has been cut with corn syrup, or that the honey has been overheated to excessive temperatures, or in some other way mistreated in its processing.

Honey primarily consists of two types of sugar – fructose and glucose – and water.  The two sugars comprise about 70% of the honey, and the water slightly less than 20%, with the remaining 10% consisting of various other kinds of sugars, minerals and enzymes.  We like to think of honey as a bee product, but it is actually more of a plant product, as the plant is largely responsible for the chemical composition of the honey.

The issue with honey crystallization lies with the ratio of fructose to glucose within the various plant nectars.  If the nectar contains a higher ratio of fructose to glucose, then the honey is less likely to crystalize.  On the other hand, if the nectar contains a higher ratio of glucose, it is more likely to crystalize rapidly.

It is the glucose that is unstable when dissolved in water.  Glucose is just not that soluble in water, and therefore needs more water to stay dissolved and liquid than the little amount of water that honey contains.

Some of the more common types of honey that contain high glucose levels, and therefore crystalize more rapidly are:

  • Alfalfa
  • Clover
  • Mesquite
  • Star Thistle
  • Sunflower

On the other hand, some types of honey that contain low glucose levels, and crystalize more slowly, are:

There are other factors too that cause honey to crystalize.  Higher temperatures tend to keep the sugars dissolved (just like higher temperatures on a stove top more easily dissolve sugar and water mixtures).  Cooler temperatures accelerate crystallization; however very cold temperatures (at least below 50°F) will slow crystallization due to thickening the honey and making it more viscous.

Also, the less filtered the honey is, the more likely it is to crystalize.  This is because the impurities in the honey, such as pollen and tiny pieces of wax give the crystals a foothold to grab on to.

Once the crystallization gets started, it’s like a runaway train.  It keeps going with each crystal giving another a foothold to attach to.  The whole process can be reversed, however, simply by reheating the honey.  Once the temperature of the honey become hot enough (usually 105°F is enough) the sugars dissolve again and the honey reverts back to its original liquid state.

When to Harvest Honey

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Although there is no exact rule as to when to harvest honey, there are some general guidelines to consider that can help you maximize your honey harvest while also minimizing your impact on the bees.  In today’s day and age of declining bee populations, it is important to not only consider your immediate goal of collecting honey, but also the long-term effect on the colony.  Afterall, what good is a large honey harvest if the colony ends up in a stressed position that jeopardizes its ability to survive for the long haul going forward?

Based on our years of experience at Wildflower Meadows, we have found that it is generally ideal to harvest honey a little before the actual end of the honey flow – when the honey flow is approximately 80-90% complete.  By this point, most of the honey has been capped and is ready for harvest, but the bees are still actively foraging.  While the nectar flow is still on, the bees tend to be generally calm and focused on foraging rather than on the loss of their honey.  While the honey flow is still in effect, the bees still have an attitude of abundance and are less apt to rob.  Having that last bit of nectar still coming in during the honey harvest enables our beekeepers to work freely without much fear of robbing, while the bees themselves stay in a relatively peaceful state.

Another consideration is that during a honeyflow, honeybees typically build up their populations rapidly.  This rapid increase in population can also, unfortunately, lead to a similar rapid growth in the varroa mite population.  For beekeepers who monitor and treat their colonies for varroa, it is especially critical to monitor varroa populations during a strong honeyflow.  In certain colonies, the varroa levels can often get so excessive during a honeyflow that the beekeeper needs to intervene and treat before the actual end of the honeyflow.  Since many of the common varroa treatments require the absence of honey supers, sometimes the need for initiating a varroa treatment can in itself dictate the time for the honey harvest.  In this situation, the beekeeper has no choice but to remove the honey supers to begin addressing the varroa mite issue.

Finally, beekeepers should always look ahead to assess the prospects for the remainder of the season when deciding on the timing of the honey harvest.  If the major honey flow takes place early in the season, with a long stretch of dry, limited foraging ahead through the late summer and autumn (as is the case in much of California), it often can make sense to harvest honey earlier in the spring honeyflow – perhaps at the 60-70% mark.  This leaves a sizable percentage of honey available for the bees themselves, enabling them to pack their colony with a generous amount of their own future food.  This gives the bees a cushion of extra stores for any foraging scarcity that they may face later in the season.

Avocado Blossom Honey

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It may surprise you to know that there are over 300 types of honey produced by bees around the world, many of which are considered ‘specialty honey’ due to their rarity. Avocado blossom honey is specialty honey that not many people have heard of – but those that have love it!

There’s a very valid reason why avocado blossom honey is difficult to find; and it all comes down to avocado production. Since avocados must be grown in tropical or semi-tropical climates, they are found in only a few places worldwide, including Mexico, Australia, and parts of Central America and California. Southern California has become of the most popular states for avocado production in the US with the increased popularity of avocados. While this increase has been excellent news for avocado farmers over the last few years, keeping up with demand can be a challenge.

Avocado blossoms flower sometime between April and May, which is a very busy time for bees. There are plenty of delicious foraging options during the spring months in California – everything from wildflowers to macadamia, orange blossoms, and other sweet-smelling fruit. Unfortunately for avocado farmers, mature honeybees sometimes tend to steer clear of avocado blossoms due to the blossoms’ high potassium and phosphorus contents. Farmers have adapted by placing hives strategically within their crop grounds – but still, it’s difficult to harvest pure avocado honey, as bees are likely to venture to nearby orchards.

Surprisingly to many, the taste of this honey doesn’t resemble an avocado at all – though, some do say the texture is similar. Avocado honey is quite sweet, with a thick, creamy, almost buttery texture. It can be easily distinguished from other honey by its rich, dark amber color, similar to that of buckwheat honey.  Although the flavor is more intense than common wildflower honey, it is not at all bitter like some of the other darker honey varietals.

Many people compare the consistency of avocado blossom honey to molasses or cane syrup, and it’s actually the perfect substitute for either. As with most other types of honey, it can be used as a healthy alternative to white sugar in baked goods, or any other recipe for that matter – just keep in mind that color may be affected if that’s a concern! The creamy texture of avocado honey makes it the perfect topping for bread or toast, or an interesting addition to any sauce, dressing, or marinade. The possibilities are endless with a little creativity.