THE PROCESS OF HARVESTING HONEY

The bees in the spring and summer collect nectar from the plants of the Greek nature, turning it into honey, but... how does it reach us? Here comes the man who "steals" the honey from the combs and produces it through the harvesting process.

I will explain to you the process of harvesting honey and how it finally reaches our table.

Harvesting or harvesting is the extraction of honey from the hive and its flight towards consumption. It is divided into two phases:

In the first phase, all the manipulations concerning the appropriate selection of honeycombs from the beehives are included.

The choice of combs is based on the maturity of the honey, which as soon as the bees have brought it to the appropriate form, ensuring excellent physical properties, they seal it. During the first phase an obstacle that the beekeeper has to overcome is to rid the selected combs of the bees that cover the combs. This is done by "shaking" the honeycomb and then brushing with special brushes that have soft hair so that the worker bees and especially the queen are not hurt.

After being selected, they are placed on empty floors and transported to a special area, suitably equipped, so that the second phase, the main harvest, begins.

The second phase includes all actions related to the extraction of honey from the selected combs and is done in a closed space. In the past, when there were no transportation facilities, the harvest was done in apiaries in tents. The processes of this phase are performed with the help of various tools and modern machines.

First, the combs are unsealed (peeled) with specially heated knives and then they are placed in a machine called a honey extractor, which is the main tool of the harvest. Its function is based on the possibility of extracting the honey from the cells of the honeycombs with the centrifugal force.

Then by opening the cannula at the base of the honey extractor, the honey flows and we place it in filtering barrels to remove foreign bodies (bees, wax, pollen grains) and then it is stored in honey collection containers. Then it is poured into large tanks (maturation barrels) so that it can be packed in various packages and quantities to finally reach our table.