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Just Piddlin Farm |
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Bees & Honey |
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Honey is a nutritious, delightful, all-natural sweetener without any added ingredients. We have our own honey bees at Just Piddlin Farm that produce delicious honey and help pollinate our pumpkins and gourds. We invite you to observe the bees in our observation hive or from a distance in the bee yard.
So how do bees make honey? Honeybees use nectar to make honey. They get nectar from pumpkin blooms, dandelions, clover and trees visiting anywhere from 100 to over 1000 flowers before returning to the hive. At the hive house bees chew the nectar with enzymes breaking down the complex sugars into simple sugars. The bees put the honey into honeycomb cells where water evaporates thickening the honey. Once the honey is at the proper moisture level the bees seal off the cell with a plug of wax.
Honey is good for you. It has minerals, trace enzymes, vitamins, and amino acids. A tablespoon provides 17 grams of carbohydrates and 64 calories. It also contains a variety of phenolic acids and flavonoids, which are antioxidants. The darker the honey, the more antioxidants. |
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Just Piddlin Farm Honey, Pumpkins, Mixed Gourds, Straw & More Chip, Jill, Sydney & Kendall Willingham 10830 S. Morgantown Rd. Woodburn, KY 42170 (270) 542-6769 |
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Chip, Jill, Sydney & Kendall Willingham 10830 S. Morgantown Rd.
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Bees & Honey |
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Bee Swarm Removal If you ever encounter a bee swarm there is nothing to be alarmed about. Bees usually swarm in spring or early summer. Swarming is the way bees reproduce and make more colonies. Often a swarm of bees will hang in a cluster before moving into a new home. So if you ever encounter a swarm of bee, please contact me and I try to come remove them for you. |
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Picture of Chip explaining to a group of elementary students the different components of a bee hive and a task of honey straight from the hive |
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You can get up close to see the bees working in the observation hive |
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Often in the heat of the summer you will see bees hanging on the outside of the hive box |
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Sydney at the slinger - Above Sydney is using the honey extractor to remove the honey from the comb. It operates like a centrifuge. |
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This is what a frame of honey looks like prior to being put in the extractor. Below - the boxes the frames are placed in while on the hive |
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“The honey and wax are melted to remove the wax so it can be used for other purposes.” |