Beezy Honey

To be successful, one must embody one of three types of bees: the Queen Bee, the hardest working drone, or the bee that doesn’t quite fit in. So, where does that leave us? We fit in.

We are the Beekeepers. Allow me to introduce our team: our dedicated CEO, Mr. Herbert Christiaans (the Drone Beekeeper); our Beekeeper Manager and Co-Drone, Mr. George Chidziva; and the Beeswax Remedy Queen, Louisa Beukes, who has connected with the Bee in her soul.

We established Beezy Honey in 2017, initially building our own beehives and selling them. As we grew, we began bee removal and catching our own bees, realizing this was more than just a hobby; it turned into a passionate and fulfilling endeavor. We are committed to saving our bees. We registered with Sabio GP 171 and placed our hives in various locations, from Polokwane in the North West to the Orange Free State and Limpopo, as far as Dwaalboom.

Our goal is to keep our bees as safe as possible and as far from human contamination as we can. Our bees pollinate Macadamia and Orange blossoms, but we are best known for our delicious creamy sunflower honey from Dwaalboom.

Unfortunately, the South African government does not subsidize or support beekeepers, and as small beekeepers, we face challenges from vandalism, theft of boxes and very long distances we have to travel for our bees safe keeping and honey harvesting.

When we harvest, we uncap, and leave additional supers on the brood boxes and gather some Propolis. We place the cappings in a sun melter to extract the last of the Honey. The wax get melted and used by Bee In Soul, for all the skin products. We strain our Honey twice. and then place it in settling tanks before bottling and distribution. We strive to keep our honey from specific regions and pollination fields, so we do not mix varieties. We offer different flavors, including Wildflower, Orange blossom, Bushveld, Macadamia, Eucalyptus, and Sunflower. Nothing is added or irradiated, ensuring our honey is raw. We carefully follow strict protocols when moving bees and during harvesting to minimize trauma.

Here are some interesting facts about bees:

Worker honeybees jobs are determined how old she is:
1-2 Days old

She has the job to clean the cells
3- 5 days old

Her job is to feed older larvae
6 – 11 days old

She has the responsibility to feed the youngest larvae
12- 17 days old

She is now producing wax, carrying food, building combs and undertaking duties
18- 21 days old

She has guard duty and is protecting the hive entrance
22 days until the end of her life , (At around 40 to 50 days) she flies from the hive to collect pollen, nectar and water.

QUEEN BEE

1. Giving orders
   2. Lays up to 2000 eggs a day
   3. She only leaves the hive for 1-2 days to mate with up to 30 drones and back in the hive she will never mate again.
   4. She has attendants that is keeping her clean, while she is busy laying eggs.
   5. The queen bee primarily eats royal jelly which is secreted by the worker bees.
   6. When the queen bee is no longer fertile, worker bees kills her and make a new queen. A handful of queens are made, the first to hatch, kills the other queens and she can live unto 5 years.

BEES FUN FACTS

1. All worker bees are female
   B. A bee produces a teaspoon of honey ( about 5gr ) in her lifetime
   C. To produce a kg of honey, bees fly equivalent of three times around the world in air miles
   D. To get more bees in your garden grow more colour.
   E. Bees have best friends,! Researcher’s have discovered that bees from special friendships within their hives, preferring to hang out and work with certain other bees over other bees.

WHY BEES MATTERS

Bees pollinate more than 100 types of crops
1 out of every 3 crop types needs pollinators
Bees are vital for grasses, cattle feed on grasses, without grass, no cattle no beef no milk no cheese , no coffee, no vegetables.

500 gr of Honey requires 1.152 bees, to travel196 km and visit 4.5 million flowers. PICTURE

How is honey made?

1. A bee forages from flowers and collects nectar through a special evolved tongue called a proboscis
   2. To transfer the nectar back to the hive, the bee stores it in a special organ called honey stomach.
   3. Enzymes in the honey stomach begins to break down the nectar into simpler sugars.
   4. Back at the hive, forager bees pass the collected nectar to younger house bees.
   5. The nectar passes mouth to mouth from one house bee to another – this process further breaks down the sugars and begins to reduce the water content of the nectar.
   6. The nectar is then deposited into hexagonal cells in the comb.
   7. To reduce the water content of the nectar further, the bees fan their wings to evaporate it.
   8. When the water content gets below 20% the honey is “ripe”.
   9. Once the honey is in the correct consistency, the bees seal the honeycomb cell with a wax capping.
   10. The honey is now preserved indefinitely.

BEE IN SOUL

During our venture it became clear that we have to safe Gods most wonder full creation”the bee” and educate people about the bee, and what more – than going into the medicinal value of beeswax and create Remedy’s from Propolis beeswax, and honey with our excess beeswax and 100% essential oils where applicable.
We manufacture all products’ in our own laboroty according to our own formulas and are not related to any other beeswax products from any other company’s.
Beeswax is thought/ known for its antibacterial and antifungal, antinflamatory properties. It is a wonderful ingredient in skin care products and lip balms, pain relieve.

BEESWAX

Honeybees produce beeswax using eight wax-producing glands located on their abdomen. Once the wax is created, they use their feet to collect it or scrape it from their bodies. They then chew it slightly before forming it into perfect hexagonal cells, all created using their tiny feet. These hexagonal cells serve a simple purpose: to store their valuable possessions, including brood (developing bees), honey (their food), and pollen (their source of nutrition).

WHY ARE BEEHIVE CELLS IN THE SHAPE OF HEXAGONS?

Recent mathematical research, known as the “Honeycomb Conjecture,” has shown that the hexagonal shape of honeycomb cells is the most compact design. This shape requires less energy, time, and beeswax to produce compared to other shapes.