We know that honey is one of the most splendid health foods as well as a great source of income for beekeepers. But how does the process of harvesting honey affect our the bees which make our honey? Is harvesting honey bad for bees? Or might it actually be a good thing both for us and for them? When I was starting out in beekeeping, I wasn’t so sure so I decided to publish this post to share with you what I have found during my research to understand the process of beekeeping and how the bees are affected.
Is harvesting honey bad for bees? In most cases harvesting honey is not bad for the bees. Due to their hoarding instincts, bees often take an excess of pollen from flowers nearby and, consequently, make more honey than they actually need. They also make honey non-stop during the times in which they are active. This leaves a huge surplus for beekeepers to take without endangering the honey bees.
Beekeeping principles are pretty similar all across the world but whether bees are hurt or not while harvesting honey depends on beekeepers and how they approach their work.
Things to keep in mind to make sure that bees are not hurt while beekeeping
Firstly, in order to facilitate the process of retrieving the honey, as well as protect your bees, you should make sure that you house your bees respectively. High-quality beehives serve as both a home and food storage site for honey bees. If you don’t use proper beehives, this is where you might start hurting your bees – they might get infected, get cold, have too much or too little space.
After placing your bees in a proper beehive, you will have to check up on those guys from time to time. You might need to help your bees here and there. But this is what a good beekeeper does – making sure that your bees have everything they need to grow and prosper as a colony.
It is also crucial to provide the bees with enough nectar sources to make all the honey they can and to avoid over-harvesting later on in the year. This is especially the case in colder climates where bees can no longer make the honey needed to sustain them throughout winter. Smart beekeepers are aware of all these things and they don’t compromise the health of their honey bees just to get honey – beekeeper and his or her bees should act as a team.
The health of a bee colony, usually consisting of up to 80,000 bees, is largely reflected by how much honey is available and the quality of honey. Too much or too little honey, as well as honey made with pollen gathered from chemically fertilized crops, can affect the bees’ chances of survival and reproduction. Sustainable beekeeping prevents bee colonies from swarming or dying off and thus protects the current and future generation of honey bees.
How to make sure that bees have enough honey left in their hives
Worker bees spend most of their time visiting flowers, gathering nectar, and producing honey. Honey making is very important for bees since they rely on honey as their main source of food (Fun fact: the female larvae chosen by the queen to become future queens are fed royal jelly instead of honey). This means that there should always be enough to feed the entire colony at any given period of time.
I would recommend that you should always leave at least 30 pounds of honey for the bees to feed on throughout winter. During the earlier seasons, when most of the bees are fairly young and in top health, it is possible to gather more honey knowing that it will be replenished soon enough. Most of the beekeepers agree that it is best to harvest honey twice a year at most- once during the springtime and again in late autumn. I also recommend that you don’t harvest from your new hive during the first year. You can read more about it in my post here – How long does it take to get honey from a new hive?
Some years with a later spring than others may even allow for only one harvest. Since nectar supply will be less during such a year, bees will make honey at a much slower rate and it will be more difficult to replenish already-low stores. Harvest might be carried out in the fall when bees have made the most honey possible.
Retrieving honey from a beehive in a sustainable way
As much as is humanly possible, beekeepers pay close attention so that bees are temporarily removed from their hives but are neither displaced nor injured in the process. As long as the bees and their hive are kept free of parasites, pathogens, and pesticides in the process of them making and beekeepers harvesting this honey, the bees won’t be harmed.
In order to harvest honey in a bee friendly way, a smoker, fueled with a chemical-free fuel source such as cotton, leaves, or grass, is used to gently smoke the hive. This calms the bees so that the individual frames inside the beehives supers can be removed for extraction. Calmed bees are less defensive and do not get hurt in the process if you do it right.
To transport the frames into your home or garage, you will need to carefully remove the bees. Doing so simply requires a bee brush, which traps the bees on the comb and rolls them away, or shaking the frame until the bees fly off. If these methods are done correctly, you can get all the bees off the frame relatively quickly and without actually harming the bees.
Transporting the frames further away from your beehives is also one of the measures to avoid harming your bees. And here is why. In order to finish the honey harvest, you need to extract honey from the frames. This is usually done by using a honey extractor which will allow for multiple frames to be used at a time. Once all of the frames are placed in the compartments that surround the roller, the frames are spun around at high-speed. This centrifuging process causes the honey to collect on the bottom, which can then be drained into a bowl or bucket. During this process, some bees lingering around the frames can be crushed by the extractor. However, this is easily preventable if beekeepers take caution and assure that the bees are far away.
Once the honey is removed from the frames, they are returned back to the hive to be reused by the bees. Worker bees will also clean up the sticky honey residues on the frames, which they use as food.
Frequent inspection of the hive is needed so that any pests or disease-causing fungi and bacteria can be noticed as soon as they start invading. These can be removed by hand or may require the addition of new frames. Chemical pesticides and fungicides are highly discouraged, as they may also kill the bees and render the honey unfit for consumption.
Check out my post on how to harvest honey for step by step instructions and other details you must know before the harvest.
What happens if excess honey in a beehive is not harvested by the beekeeper
It isn’t necessarily a good thing to leave a hive unharvested. Bees may find their place is too small and swarm, leaving the hive in search of a bigger home. Another possibility is that the bees will not leave the hive but will store the honey in the combs designated for raising bee broods. If this happens, the colony will not be able to raise new bees and the next generation will decline in strength as well as number.
How much honey is harvested from the average healthy beehive
Each super produces an average of 30 to 70 pounds of honey a year depending on its size and depth. A shallow super produces around 2 to 2.5 gallons of honey (25-30 pounds). Meanwhile, a medium depth super will produce 3 to 4 gallons (35-40 pounds) and a full-depth super will produce 5 to 6 gallons (60-70 pounds). Most hives contain several supers stacked on top of one another so beekeepers can well make over a hundred pounds of honey. Under ideal management and environmental conditions, the amount of honey in each super may also exceed these given values.
Is beekeeping unethical and cruel?
In principle, sustainable beekeeping is not unethical and cruel. But there are cases where bees are exploited for higher profits and all of the sustainable practices are forgotten. Here are a few examples of exploiting the honey bees for higher return: harvesting almost all of the honey in the hive, feeding bees only sugar during winter, increasing the size of bee comb’s cell, using antibiotics and pesticides.
Everything depends on you – the beekeeper
Whether harvesting honey hurts the bees and whether the beekeeping is unethical or cruel really depends on the beekeeper. If you are just starting out in beekeeping, I really urge you to start it in a right, sustainable way. Spend a few minutes and go through my post for beginners just to make sure that you got it right – click here. This will ensure that both your colonies of bees are strong and that you will help the future generations of bees and beekeepers by doing it right.
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If you have any questions or comments about the post or beekeeping in general, please do not hesitate to reach out via the contact form.
Keep buzzing!