If you ever have a cold drink with sugar in it at a restaurant you are bound to have had a bee buzzing around you once or twice in your life. Bees are fantastic little insects. Most famous for a golden liquid they produce called honey! Little else is commonly known about the honeybee and its other works. Let's introduce you to the humble honey bee now...
The apiculture niche industry is vibrant and in high demand. Bee products are an integral part of most of our lives in some way or another. We just don’t realise it. Bee products form part of the ingredients of all sorts of useful items you and I use everyday. There are shampoos, soaps, beauty products, candles, sauces, drinks and medicines that use bee products as integral ingredients. Take a closer look.
An introduction to bee products
It goes without saying that honey is the best-known bee product of all. Even honey comes in different formats. It also is the base ingredient for a number of other bee products or by-products you can make with honey. We will elaborate later on the honey products.
It is not a common bee product in the South African beekeeping industry. The market for queen bees is not in high demand in the local industry as our bees are highly productive and reproduce wild swarms in vast numbers that beekeepers can ‘catch’ and house in a comfortable beehive. In international regions such as America, there is certainly a market for queen bee rearing for commercial gain. In United States, it is common practice to purchase queen bee packs through mail order. These would include one queen bee with a royal court of around 30 worker bees.
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Although not a direct bee product it would definitely generate ongoing income. Pollination of crops for fruit, seed or general is certainly part and parcel of the honey bees daily workload. Beekeepers are in a position to provide especially focused pollination services to farmers by ‘flooding’ the local site over the flowering period of the crop in question.
Beekeepers as pollinators have the opportunity to incorporate pollination services into the general bee product list and improve income yield generated for both the beekeeper as well as the farmer. Studies show that pollination services can increase crop yield by up to 70%.
Apiculture or beekeeping niche products include bee stings, bee pollen and bee venom. Specialist bee products that can be harvested for both medicinal or health uses are continued in the paragraphs below...
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Bee products and Beauty
Royal jelly is used throughout the beauty products industry in facial creams and ointments. It is especially known for treating wrinkles and facial marks. Many women make use of creams and ointments that contain royal jelly. As it is very difficult and time consuming to produce and harvest this niche bee product is probably the most sought after in the industry.
Beeswax is another apiculture niche product derived from the harvesting of honey. Each harvest of honey should yield an estimated 0.5Kg of pure beeswax. Due to the low yield per hive beeswax is always in high demand. Aside from using the beeswax to make candles, pure beeswax is also used in beauty products such as creams and body hair waxing. It also has industrial uses as well for machinery. South African beeswax is extremely sought after as it is deemed very high quality.
Raw honey is also used in many face packs as a skin cleanser. Raw honey and organic honey make for a good moisturiser as well as an excellent ointment for seeping wounds or open cuts in difficult regions of the body such as the head, groin, feet and under arms. Raw honey and organic honey enjoy infusion of the properties of the nectar and pollen collected. In this way, the honey carries traces of antibiotic, anti-fungal and antiviral fighting ingredients.
Bee products and Medicines
We don’t realise it but honey bees are pollinators of majority of the plants, fruit and trees that grow on the planet. They certainly aren’t the only pollinators but they get around. Along with gathering pollen and nectar, bees also collect tree sap mixed with a mix of substances to create bee propolis.
This bee propolis is affectionately nicknamed “bee cement” as it is used by bees to close any gaps or seal any openings in the beehive to ensure efficient internal climate control of the bee hive. Bee propolis is a phenomenal medicinal bee product offering antibiotic, antiviral and anti-fungal properties for herbal remedies or even for soaps.
Recent studies have shown the bee sting to have use in the treatment of multiple sclerosis and other arthritic diseases. Honey bee venom comprises a cocktail of different proteins yet to be fully studied as to the reason for their combination and efficiency. A bee sting will affect people in different ways. Some people are even allergic to a bee sting. The main affect a bee sting will have is causing anaphylactic shock. Your heartbeat increases and so does the breathing rate. One reason a bee sting is used for arthritis treatment is that the bee venom helps to ease the joints.
Bee sting treatment can be as simple as removing the bee sting and applying anti-itch ointment. For some people, it may require the administering of adrenalin injection to stabilise the body in an extreme case. It is suggested that antihistamine tablets be carried by beekeepers if they are not aware of their allergy status.
Studies have also been conducted on the healing properties of raw honey. If applied to open sores and cuts that don’t stop bleeding, raw honey has been proven to offer positive results in creating a protective barrier over the applied area. The raw honey also soothes the skin and damaged tissue and assists in the regeneration and repair of the skin’s natural process. Honey can be especially useful on head wounds, seeping sores and hard to bandage areas. It can also offer positive healing effect to open wounds by rubbing raw honey directly into and around the wound and then covering with bandages.
Another name for raw honey is natural honey. Organic honey is harvested from organic farm produce. It is natural honey that requires certification to be registered as organic. Just like raw honey or natural honey is in high demand, organic honey is expensive to certify and grade and in turn it commands among the highest prices in the industry. Niche markets exist for delis and cafés all around the world in high-income shop corner retailers.
Beeswax candles have been used to alleviate earache. A hallow beeswax candle is placed over the ear with the ache and lit. It is said that the suction helps to alleviate earache.
Honey Bee products as food
All types of honey make for good food. You can get the regular honey bottled and available on shelves of retailers, raw honey (natural honey) is usually available at herbal shops or direct from beekeepers and organic honey is available from delicatessen cafés and organic farm stalls.
Honey is a treat. Believe it or not but it is used by tea lovers, pizza makers and even beer makers. Honey is served on waffles, at coffee shops, pancakes and forms the base for many basting sauces or marinades.
Bee pollen is a major source of protein. Beekeepers collect honey bee pollen during the summer in order to feed it back to the bee colony in the winter season. People are also able to eat the bee pollen.
Comb honey is a unique treat. It is when the raw honey has not been extracted using a honey extractor or filtering system to remove the honey from the beeswax comb it is stored in. Some people prefer to eat honey inside the honeycomb and experience the chewy texture of liquid honey and sticky beeswax. Generally, comb honey is also more expensive than that of bottled honey.
Honey wine is well known around the world as mead. There are specialist mead makers that bottle and sell mead as their primary business. The local South African traditions also include use of ‘iqhilika’ by the Xhosa in ancestral rituals. Honey beer is produced by fermenting the honey, much like rice wine, over a number of days. Monks in monasteries used mead as their staple intake of fluids in the middle ages. It was much more hygienic than the water at the time.
Honey Bee products in summary
There's more reason to get involved with beekeeping than meets the eye. Apiculture provides niche products of all types for beekeepers to generate profits. Almost everything that honey bees produce have a market. Pizza’s, marinades, beauty creams, make-up products, beer, wine, medicines, ointments and skin treatments are some of the by-products that include honey bee products. It really is fascinating how the little honey bee can provide an abundance of wholesome benefits for us.