not (only) honey:
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With all “beehives” as well as with the “Top-Bar-Hive”, the principle is - to put it simply - to let the bees rest as much as possible in summer and all or much of their own honey as winter stock in winter. What you harvest is simply processed without a centrifuge.
You can find detailed information on simple beekeeping here.
Anyone who wants to prevent our bees from dying and the environment from being carelessly polluted with poisons can act. You don't have to become a beekeeper yourself.
But anyone can support beekeepers: simply by buying beekeeping honey instead of cheap industrial honey. If our beekeepers get a fair price for their honey, it is a recognition of their work and an investment in their work for the bees.
Honey from Germany is a contribution to environmental protection
Over three-quarters of native plants are dependent on pollination by bees. By enjoying beekeeper honey from home, you are making an active contribution to preserving biodiversity.
Mir schmeckt Honig am besten, wenn er nicht gerührt wurde. Ich esse viel Honig direkt aus dem Glas, schlecke den Löffel langsam ab, und lasse den Honig auf der Zunge zergehen. Zuerst lösen sich die weichen Anteile, dann kommen die härteren Bestandteile daran, immer ist ein anderes Empfinden dabei.
A porcelain spoon is ideal for this. It's a different taste like a metal spoon.
Buy and consume honey responsibly-
Can I still consume honey at all?
We are asked this question again and again and, given a holistic approach, is not that easy to answer. The answer is yes, but ...
Beekeepers produce around a third of our honey, two thirds are imported from other countries. German honey production is subject to monoculture-like and intensive livestock husbandry. From a climatic point of view, there would be more optimal regions than Germany for economic honey production. From a social point of view, the German beekeeper currently works practically for free. It therefore seems absurd to produce intensively while exploiting nature and still not being able to meet demand.
The honey consumer, on the other hand, supports the pollination service that occurs as a waste product from honey beekeeping. And it is precisely this that is of greater economic and ecological importance than honey. Not using German honey would currently be fundamentally wrong and would temporarily damage nature, our plant food chain and thus also our economy.
Soll ich den Honig ernten?
You do not have to. There are some people who just want to keep bees. You want to enjoy the honey bees and watch the bees in the garden.
What if I don't take honey? The bees just carry on as before and the honey harvest is only a small part of beekeeping. Keeping bees involves many activities and means taking responsibility for the bee colonies. Even with a beekeeping without honey harvest you have to look after your colonies regularly.
If you don't take honey, the bees hibernate on the honey that they brought in in the summer. However, if the summer honey is made from honeydew in large proportions, this can lead to complications during wintering. Honeydew contains more fiber than honey from blossom. Too much fiber leads to the bees filling the faeces quickly. At the end of winter, this can lead to the bees in the hive being defecated without the possibility of a cleaning flight. This leads to the contamination of the prey and promotes the outbreak of non-infectious dysentery.
Almost all honeydew honeys contain the triple sugar melezitose. It has the property of crystallizing out very quickly. In southern Germany in particular, there are cases where the proportion of melezitose in honey is so high that it becomes a problem. The honey sometimes already crystallizes in the honeycomb and cannot be liquefied again by the bees. One also speaks of cement honey. The bees starve even though there are filled honeycombs.
If honey is not taken from the bees in May or June, the colonies have more resources at their disposal than with a honey-harvest method. The colonies are growing stronger and therefore tend to swarm more. Of course, even in the case of a mode of operation without honey extraction, all colonies have to be checked regularly and checked whether the colonies are doing well? Is there any danger that the peoples will starve to death? Are there diseases or parasites among the people? Regular checks for the Varroa mite and control of the mite are particularly important. This is also necessary for the owners of a beehive or another alternative form of hive such as TopBar for extensive beekeeping.
Wer Honig anbietet, produziert diesen somit zwangsweise unter widernatürlichen Eingriffen ins Bienenvolk und nimmt unerwünschte Nebeneffekte in Kauf.
A detailed analysis shows that honey from your beekeeper cannot have been produced according to the species or its nature. If so, then one can speak of honey that is closer to nature and less naturally produced.
This dilemma can only be resolved if beekeeping begins to move towards diversified beekeeping. For example, as we assume in our ecological (consciously not biological) work in favor of the honeybees:
The beekeeper produces 80% of his stock using extensive methods and keeps 20% close to nature. If you can buy honeycomb honey or pressed (instead of centrifuged) honey from a beekeeper, give it a try and take a hearty bite into the honeycomb structure. You will be amazed by the taste!
Die ältesten Honigkenner sagen: “Ihr wisst ja heute gar nicht mehr, wie Honig eigentlich schmecken würde!”. Verantwortlich dafür ist die moderne “gute imkerliche Praxis”, welche sich auf klinisch reinen Honig fokussiert, den es in der Natur so nie zuvor gegeben hat! Presshonig sei zu wenig rein. Zum Verkauf dürfe nur Honig aus zuvor unbebrüteten Waben verkauft werden.
Which honey should i buy?
Those who only look at their own health are interested in unadulterated honey. In other words, pure honey without additives such as sugar and without environmental toxins such as pesticides. Biodynamic beekeeping under the label “Demeter” is currently going the furthest here. However, Demeter honey is difficult to obtain. Basically, the purity of the honey increases with increasing distance from the agricultural zone, here the city can be interesting and for Northern Germany especially the heather region.
Wer ein Herz für Biene und Ökologie hat, interessiert sich für die artgerechte Tierhaltung und für die nachhaltige Produktion.
Honey is a special juice because it consists not only of various sugars such as fructose, grape sugar, malt sugar, palatinose, trehalose and melezitose, but also of various enzymes, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and pollen. Our bees make this product by taking nectar in a complicated process, storing it, adding enzymes, draining it, and finally storing it in the honeycombs. The end product is not only shaped by the work of the bees, but also by the raw material. The flown nectar dispensers, the ripening time, the season and the amount of honeydew lead to different products with different looks, tastes and contents.
Honey is the substance that our bees produce for their own nutrition and health - it is purely vegetarian. A distinction is made between blossom honey and honeydew. In the case of blossom honeys, the starting product is the secretion of nectar from flowering plants, less often the secretion from nectaries outside the flowers (e.g. cherry laurel). Honeydew is the sieve tube sap from plants, which is ingested by scale insects and aphids and then excreted and ingested by bees.
By the way, honey is not always healthy. So-called mad honey, in which the bees prefer to fly and collect Pontic rhododendrons (in the Mediterranean area), contain poisonous grayanotoxins which can lead to slowed heart rates, circulatory problems, vomiting and hallucinations.
Deaths are described as the rare and worst symptoms of poisoning. In some peoples, this honey is also purposely collected in order to achieve its hallucinogenic effect.
In second place are the bacteriostatic inhibins, and then, with 0.6%, the organic acids such as malic, citric, succinic, gluconic and acetic acids. Vitamins are also available in various compositions, but due to their low concentration they cannot make any relevant nutritional contribution. Even if amino acids only make up a small amount of 0.1% honey, they are so important because they create different colors and flavors depending on the temperature. In this way, up to 120 different aromatic substances are created in honey.
Honig als Heilmittel war schon bei Babyloniern, Ägyptern und Chinesen bekannt. In Ägypten wurden Bienen in Tonröhren gehalten und Honig wurde als Nahrungs- und Heilmittel geerntet. Um 460 vor Christi wurden durch Hippokrates und seine Schüler mehr als 300 Rezepturen die Honige enthalten aufgezeichnet. In der Menschheitsgeschichte ist Honig als Teil des Lebens, sei es als Süßungs-, Heil- oder kosmetisch angewandtes Pflegemittel nicht wegzudenken. Im 20. Und 21. Jahrhundert hat man begonnen, die gesundheitsfördernde Wirkung von Honig wissenschaftlich zu untersuchen und den Nutzen in das Spektrum der übrigen Heilmittel einzuordnen. Trotz Antibiotika, industriell hergestellten desinfizierenden Salben, Cremes und Wundauflagen erweist sich Honig immer noch als ein in vielen Bereichen hilfreiches und heilendes Naturprodukt.
Honey as an agent in wound healing
- Honey was viewed with skepticism for a long time after simple sugar was used to treat wounds, which proved to be inferior to many modern wound treatment agents. However, honey itself cannot be compared with simple table sugar, as it has a number of additional mechanisms of action. Honey has an osmotic effect and removes water from a bacterially infected wound, which can kill bacteria. This also appears to play a role in the treatment of Helicobacter pylori, a germ in the stomach that causes stomach ulcers and duodenal ulcers. The permanent production of glucose oxidase results in low levels of bactericidal hydrogen peroxides. The concentration is so low that, contrary to the application as a 3% solution, no tissue damage occurs. Hydrogen peroxide also seems to attract scavenger cells into the wound. Methylglyoxal (MGO) is a by-product of the sugar metabolism and also has a bacteriostatic effect. Methylglyoxal is found in New Zealand Manuka honey in particularly high concentrations. Honey contains defensins, which are small proteins produced by plants that can destroy the bacterial membranes and thus also have a bactericidal effect. The acidic pH value between 3.8 and 4.3 is also effective inhibit bacterial growth.
In many studies, honey has proven to be equivalent to modern wound treatment methods. However, since honey can contain Clostridium botulinum spores in small quantities, the medicinally used honey is sterilized with gamma rays (commercial product e.g. Medihoney ©)
Since the bacteriostatic effect depends, among other things, on the proportion of methyglyoxal, you should buy honeys with a high MGO number (indicated on the label). The MGO number is between 30 and 550 and is also reflected in the correspondingly rising prices. In various studies, honey has also proven to be effective against problem germs such as MRSA (multi-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains) and VRE (vancomycin-resistant strains).
In the case of superficial wounds and burns, honey can be applied as a simple ointment or cream or pure, but is not recommended unreservedly because, as mentioned above, clostridial spores can be present in honey. When using medical honey in connection with modern wound dressings, which prevent the wound from drying out and softening at the same time, honey seems to work better than most other locally applicable therapeutic agents (some silver sulfadiazine) Consultation is essential before starting a treatment. Special attention has also been paid to the treatment of damage to the mucous membranes, such as those that occur during radiation or after chemotherapy. Significant studies are available, particularly on the treatment of radiation-related damage to the mucous membranes. The use of honey has led to this, and also contributed to a significant stabilization of body weight. a significant improvement in symptoms
Honig bei Heuschnupfen
- Hay fever, watery eyes or even asthmatic complaints are due to the fact that the body reacts to certain pollen with an excessive defense. The mucous membranes swell and secrete fluid. The eyes water and sneeze flush the allergens out of the body or at least try to do so. Training for the body is an important component in the treatment of allergic diseases. Our defense slowly gets used to the allergen again with ever increasing concentrations of the allergenic substance in order to recapture the excessive defense. This dulls the immune system until it reacts normally. This so-called desensitization should also be possible with honeys, which always contain pollen, i.e. allergens. For an optimal effect, the honeys should have been collected from the living environment of the person affected, so that there is always an accurate pollen mix in the honey. In order to achieve good results, the treatment should be carried out in the winter months. The result may be better if pollen is added to the honey.
Honey for stomach and intestinal diseases
Research indicates that honey can have protective effects on the lining of the stomach and intestines. In animal experiments, honey can inhibit Helicobacter pylori, for example, and enemas with honey can heal severely inflamed intestinal mucosa more quickly.
Application example for colds
And who does not know honey in hot milk as a remedy for cold symptoms.
However: Against colds it is better to let honey melt on the tongue pure than to dissolve it in hot milk. Because the great heat can at least reduce or even destroy the antibacterial effect.
and of course the beeswax
it is of a smooth consistency, light yellow to honey yellow, luminous wax color and a very pleasant, mild honey scent.
Wirklich gutes, unverfälschtes Wachs brauchen unsere Bienen, und haben Sie sich auch verdient. Die wichtigsten Pflanzen für die Entstehung von Bienenwachs sind die frühblühenden Weiden, wie zum Beispiel die Salweide, aber auch Löwenzahn und Kirsch-/ Schlehenblüte. Deren Pollen enthält das biologisch hochwertige Eiweiß, das die meist jungen Bienen wiederum in ihrem Körper in Bienenwachsplättchen verwandeln. Die Bienen sind die einzigen Lebewesen, die ihren unmittelbaren Lebensraum aus sich selbst heraus schaffen und gestalten können. Jedes Bienenvolk errichtet einen individuellen Wabenbau, bei dem jede Zelle ihren bestimmten Platz hat, wenn man ihnen Naturwabenbau ohne die Vorgabe von Mittelwänden ermöglicht.
The honeycomb structure can be seen as the largest organ or the skeleton of the bee colony due to its importance for the life cycle. It is dynamic and is expanded and changed by the bees according to their needs. Since we enable the bees to build natural honeycombs - the bees produce fresh wax every year for this - and we only use substances that are naturally present in the honey or wax of the bee colony to keep the bees healthy, we get a beeswax when melting down excess honeycombs greatest possible purity without residues.
The possibilities of using beeswax are extremely diverse and range from cosmetics such as lip balms and ointments to remedies such as beeswax plasters to soap, shoe polish and ingredients for homemade colors. And of course it can also be used as a candle in the dark season, when it becomes light and warm again.
Wax ripening -
Bienenwachs bekommt mit der Zeit eine helle Patina. Sie ist ein Zeichen der Reifung des Wachses. Wenn Ihnen die Patina nicht gefällt, erhalten z.B. Kerzen wieder ihr ursprüngliches Aussehen zurück, wenn Sie sie nur kurz warm anfönen. Übrigens: Kenner lassen Ihre Kerzen reifen, weil sie dann länger brennen.
Use of beeswax in beekeeping -
We use virgin white uncapping wax and light-colored, non-incubated natural honeycombs to produce wax sheets that are cut into initial strips and soldered into the frames or used as central walls in the honeycomb.
Pure beeswax in bars of approx. 20 g for further processing, e.g. B. for cosmetic applications or beeswax towels.