NEWSLETTER #27 (English) from Urs & Izzy: Noooo! Cement Forest Honey :(
- Izzy the busy bee....
- Jul 28, 2024
- 4 min read
July & August 2024 (Issue #27)
Dear honey lovers, Oh no:-( the harvest of the summer, forest honey was a real disaster! We could not get any honey, even if it was there, at our fingertips. Most of the honey was solid, and we couldn't' get it out of the comb. The culprit? Nature! Well, a small agent sent by nature. You want to know more? keep on reading about what it is called 'Cement Honey'.
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News from the Beehives
We harvested honey the 25th and 26th of July -- and we had already received several warnings, as much from the beekeeper association, as from fellow beekeepers. This was going to be a tough harvest, as we had to move a lot of material... for nothing. This year, the weather conditioned the type of honey that was produced: cement honey. It was a way of complaining by nature. The forest did not receive enough water - on time-, and let us, humans know about it, this time through the bees. This is not good news for forest, of course, but neither for humans (we don't have much forest honey), and even less for the bees (if left this year to their own devices, most of them would die over winter).
So, it was a difficult week, and now we have several additional weeks of extra work, to make sure that our little wonders are ready for the winter season.
p.s. this is a real photo of the honey extraction from last week... at its most! Almost no honey coming out. But you see that the bees, still like their honey!
Where is my Honey...?
Your honey is on the comb...and it will remain there. There is no way to extract it!! :-( So, what do we do with the frames that contain the honey? For the time being, nothing. They cannot be returned now to the bees as winter reserves. Why? because melezitose is difficult to digest for the bees in winter, weakening the colony. And, unfortunately, their own reserves, the ones that I left them to overwinter, will also have to be removed. So this year, we will have to feed them sugar, so they can eat it during the cold months and survive the winter. The frames, with the honey inside, have been now stored away until early spring. In spring, we will return the cement honey to the bees. When mixed with other sources of food (nectar, pollen), the bees can handle melezitose with no problem. It is a little bit like us, if you feed us with only pork roast, we would have problems digesting it. But if eaten with other feeds, greens, salads, etc, we could enjoy some meat also!
We managed to extract a little bit of liquid forest honey...which probably will solidify soon. Of course, the honey is OK to be eaten by humans, particularly if you like crystallized honey!
Facts & Figures
Remember that Honey is mainly made of sucrose, a di-saccharid, which contains 1 molecule of glucose + 1 molecule of fructose.(+ many other small goodies, like enzymes, oligo-elements, minerals and pollen of course). So, what is melezitose honey? It is, chemically speaking, honey in which there is >20% of a tri-saccharide called melezitose; (2 molecules of glucose + 1 molecule of fructose, like in the image). Honey always contains some melezitose (about 4%), but when it contains more than 20% of the tri-saccharide, the honey solidifies almost immediately, and it is called cement-honey. Also, normal honey contains between 15%-16% of water, whereas melezitose honey contains about 10% - 11%. So it is very concentrated honey!
Did you know that...?
Melezitose honey occurs every 20-some years. it occurred in the Bern canton on the 1980s, then in the Zurich canton on 1999, and now again!. But, Why? First, you should know that melezitose occurs only on forest honey. For various reasons, the trees (conifers, pine trees) produce from time to time a very high osmolality phloem sap. The louse that feed from it and produce the honeydew counteract this osmotic pressure by osmoregulation, and produce oligosaccharides such as melezitose, which is the feed of the bees in summer.
It is known that too many abnormal temperature fluctuations during summer, and low rain precipitation during the same period, increase osmolarity in the trees' sap. Some specific aphids (like the black bark louse, Picea abies) also produce more melezitose. Like in humans, the change of food (from the normal di-saccharid to the tri-saccharide melezitose) affects the gut microbiota of the bees, with a decrease of the Lactobacillus 4 and Lactobacillus Kunkeei, and the melezitose has also lower nutriitonal value to the bee. This makes the bees having 'heavy digestions', and more often, gut bloating and diarrhea problems. No, don't worry, this does not happens with humans, we can digest the tri-saccharides as good as the di-saccharids!
These bee-gut problems are only because at this time of the year, they only source their food intake from the forest. This subject is so important for humanity, that full PhDs are written on the subject!
Swiss Bees
Unfortunately, the subject of the month (and the focus of a lot of professional api-publications in the last month in Switzerland) is Melezitose honey. Agroscope, the Swiss official publication of agriculture, knowledge and education, but also the cantonal ones (Schwyz, Obwalden, Zurich, Zug, Appenzell.... Not only is Switzerland, but also n Germany and Austria are suffering cement-honey on their hives. What does this means? probably higher prices of Swiss honey due to scarcity. No, don't worry, we keep our prices!
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