What is Honey?

Honey is a natural product made by honeybees. It is stored in the beehive and serves as a food source for the bees, especially during bad weather and in winter.

There are two main types of honey:

Blossom Honey: Made from the nectar of flowers.
Honeydew Honey: Made from honeydew, a sugary liquid secreted by insects.

Honeybees store more honey than they need under normal conditions. This trait has allowed them to survive longer periods of unfavorable conditions throughout their evolution. This enables us to harvest a portion of the honey without endangering the survival of the bee colony.

Nowadays, it is common practice to take almost all the honey from the bees during harvest and to overwinter them with sugar syrup. However, honey contains much more than just sugar. We believe this is not a fair exchange and therefore leave enough honey for the winter in the beehive during the harvest.

How Bees Produce Honey

Collecting: Forager bees fly to flowers or trees and suck up nectar or honeydew.
Transport: The collected liquid is transported back to the hive in the bee's honey stomach.
Transfer: In the hive, the content is passed on to younger worker bees.
Processing: These bees repeatedly process the liquid, adding enzymes that convert the sugars.

Storage: The processed liquid is stored in honeycomb cells.
Water Reduction: By fanning their wings and utilizing the warmth of the hive, excess water evaporates.
Ripening: The honey ripens in the honeycomb cells.
Sealing: Once the honey has reached the right consistency, the bees seal the cell with a wax cap.

The Amazing Achievement of Bees: Facts and Figures

To produce 500g of honey, bees must collect about 2.5kg of nectar.
This requires around 100,000 flights.
The total flight distance for one jar of honey is approximately 75,000 km.
A bee visits between 50 and 100 flowers during a single foraging trip.
A single bee colony can produce up to 50 kg of honey in a good season.
A single bee produces about one teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime.
Bees can fly at speeds of up to 24 km/h.
A bee colony consists of up to 60,000 bees during the peak season.
Bees communicate through the "waggle dance" to inform other bees about rich nectar sources.
To produce one kilogram of honey, bees must collect nectar from about 5 million flowers.

The Role of Beekeepers

As beekeepers, we take on an important responsibility for the well-being of our bee colonies and the quality of the honey produced. Our main tasks include the care and monitoring of the beehives to ensure the bees are doing well. We watch for diseases, ensure sufficient food, maintain proper comb hygiene, and create optimal living conditions for the bees.

By the time of the honey harvest, the honey is already "finished." Our job is simply to gently extract and bottle this natural product. Once the honey is ripe, we remove the corresponding combs and take them to our processing room. There, the honey is uncapped, spun from the combs, and filtered to remove wax particles. Until it is bottled, the honey is stored in larger containers in our cooled storage room. Creamed honey requires an additional intermediate step before it ends up in the jar: it is stirred over several days, which breaks down the naturally forming crystal structure, keeps the crystals small, and gives it its delicate, creamy texture.

During the harvest, honey flows from the extractor into the coarse sieve

Honey Varieties: Origin and Overview

One jar each of forest honey, summer blossom honey, and creamed honey

The diversity of honey varieties arises from the different nectar sources that bees visit. Depending on the season, weather conditions, the flowers available at the location, and the preferences of the bees, different flavor combinations emerge anew each year. If honey is harvested only once a year, you get a full-year honey that reflects the diversity of the blossoms at that location. By harvesting multiple times, more specific varietal honeys can be obtained. These reflect the dominant blossoms of a particular period. Examples include rapeseed honey in spring or linden honey in early summer.

Purple rampion bellflowers in the evening sun

Beekeepers can influence the creation of certain varieties through targeted site selection or migratory beekeeping. Each type of honey is characterized by its unique color, consistency, and taste. For instance, acacia honey is light and liquid, while chestnut honey tastes dark and savory. Forest honey, which comes from honeydew, forms its own category with a typically dark color and strong aroma. Creamed honey can be made from various types and is created by stirring the honey several times until it achieves its delicate consistency. This variety makes honey a fascinating natural product that captures the special characteristics of its environment and time of origin.

Our Locations and Varieties: Currently, our bee colonies are distributed between our two locations, Kollmitzberg and Gschirm. We extract honey two to three times a year, which gives us exciting varieties each year. Sometimes our bees produce a spring forest honey that combines the savory note of the forest with the fruity essence of fruit tree blossoms, while the summer honey becomes an aromatic blossom honey. In another year, we might get a malty summer forest honey, while the spring honey reflects the sweet, fruity note of the fruit tree blossoms. We also produce creamed blossom and forest honeys and enjoy experimenting with new textures. Thus, for enthusiasts, we often have spreadable, coarse-grained honey in our assortment.