Today we are here in Itapira, on the border between São Paulo and Minas Gerais, to see how honey is produced. Let's go! This here is Daniel.
Daniel is a beekeeper, he's a guy who raises bees. So, we are in the apiary, which is a bee farm. Daniel, what bee do you keep here?
Brazil, in general, creates Africanized bees, a mixture of the African bee with the European bee. And here it is no different. Which is the one you already have in a cartoon, yellow and black.
Does the sting hurt? Yes. Have you taken a lot?
I took some. I always imagined that next to an apiary there had to be a lot of flowers for the bees. How does it work?
We call this bee pasture, honey production is directly related to the existing flora and bees. The bees will move to a flower, collect nectar and bring this nectar into the hive. Along the way, it transforms the nectar, breaking down sucrose, glucose and fructose to deposit in the alveoli and form honey.
Is honey regurgitated by the bee? It's bee regurgitation. Own, natural and that only they can produce.
And man still hasn't managed to synthesize it and have a product like honey for us today. So, when we read on the label that honey is made from eucalyptus flowers, it means that there is a eucalyptus plantation nearby, or orange blossom. .
. A eucalyptus plantation, as you said, they will get nectar from the eucalyptus flowers, but they can also get it from wild flowers next door, or if there is an orange plantation next door. .
. Can't train the bee You can't train the bee to fetch. It ends up leaving.
When we place the bees, which we call migratory beekeeping, close to a eucalyptus forest, it is because those forests are ready to receive the bees, the flowers are opening and they will easily end up looking for nectar in these flowers. Come on, I'm curious now. We keep talking in the middle of the bees.
Ok Practically an Apollo 11 astronaut. It's already smoked in the front to scare the bees. In fact, he is putting them all inside the hive.
Do they go inside when you smoke it? Picture the fear I have of my clothes having a little hole. Each box of these has 80 to 100 thousand bees.
Each hive has a queen inside. The queen lasts, practically, from 2 to 5 years. While each little bee, each worker that we are seeing, has a lifespan of approximately 30 days.
And when the queen dies, what happens to the hive? They produce a new queen. So, if we're lucky, we'll see the royal cell in there, which is where an egg is deposited, in a larger space, where a queen can be produced.
Is this a drone? This one is the drone. And he doesn't have venom, he doesn't sting.
Its purpose is procreation, It will fertilize a princess and make Its queen. This is a honeycomb. Is it closed?
It is closed, the bees brought nectar from this local flora. We basically have eucalyptus here. The bees bring the nectar in here and, as the bees move, this honey dries up and reaches a humidity of less than 20% water.
This here is wax that's up here and it's closed and ready to harvest. Do they make the lid? They make a cap.
But more important than honey production and a service that bees provide to humanity is pollination. So, they are responsible for taking the pollen to a flower and, from that flower, we can take fruit. Apple, watermelon, kiwi, orange are fruits that would have difficulty continuing in their existence if we didn't have the presence of this wonder that are bees.
Are you listening to their hum? Yeah, sounds like there's a waterfall. The sound we hear here is scary, right?
It's a nice sound. They are singing to us. So, what he is taking are the frames where the bees deposit.
. . I don't know if we have an open one, without being honeycombed.
Look, they're not sealed yet. That means she hasn't completed it with honey or that it hasn't dried out yet. It is still not 100% dry and, therefore, It has not deposited this layer of wax by sealing it and keeping the honey ready for harvesting.
That bottom box is the nest, and these two boxes that we have up here are the supers. OK! My God!
Here is the nest. The yellow one is the pollen, and what is this closed one? Is it honey too?
It's the brood, the brood is in here. Baby bees are in there. The bees take about 25 days for a little bee like that to be born.
Here is a royal cellar, where the posture to be made a new queen is deposited. The queen we have here is the mother of all these bees. Look how the bees are trying to sting Daniel here.
Daniel, tell me something, if we were without protection here, we would probably have died, right? So it depends. There are some people who are allergic, and one or two bees stinging, you can end up feeling sick and can have an anaphylactic shock.
Bees are not aggressive. Their concern is that we are, in a way, attacking the place where they live. Sure, sure.
But if we did that, opened the hive without protection. . .
We would take some risk. I'll tell you it's way more impressive than I imagined. Look at the drone here.
The drone only disturbs the hive. The purpose is reproduction. Do you have any idea how many drones there are?
About 400 drones per hive. Each of these is a frame, and then he removed a full one. We fill there.
And will replace with another. And he is replacing it with the other one, so that they can now fill this one with honey again. I didn't know wax was reused.
It ends up making the work of the bees easier. Where does it come in here? It's down there where the entrance is.
Look at this here, it's a chain of bees. What is bee venom used for? The main purpose is therapeutic.
It works very well, and scientifically proven, for arthritis, arthrosis, rheumatism. In addition to functioning as natural botox. Now we have to go back to the house, but we're going back to the honey house like this, right?
Yes, they're after us. Even because we are taking their food there, look. Let's see, then, how to get the honey out of these combs.
How about driving around in a car full of bees? You have no idea, there are like 20 bees inside the car. Now Daniel is going to show us what is done after the honey has already been harvested.
Can you take it out here? Absolutely sure? From now on, it stung, it's gone.
We came back, and the clothes are full of bee stings. There's a Natã outfit that I'm going to show you. Our clothes are full of these bee stings.
If it wasn't for the protection, it was all on our skin. Look, this is the honey house, it's where you're going to get the honey that was inside those combs. What is it called here?
Uncapping. Uncap the honey. Which is to take off this little cap.
It's like uncapping honey. And here, you already enjoy what comes out of honey. The honey comes out, and we reuse the wax.
Heavy. There must be over a kilo in here, isn't there? How much does each box of this one yield approximately?
Each piece. Each frame of this one should have approximately one and a half to two kilos of honey. The comb goes inside this centrifuge.
It is also interesting to point out that the bees inside the hive, they have activity in the period of its life. There are bees going out to fetch water, it is a next activity, and bees that go out to fetch pollen, the queen's production is directly related to the amount of pollen that is entering. And the amount of honey, it increases its production because it knows it has food to maintain that entire hive.
Until, at the end of its life, this bee leaves the hive, lands on a tree leaf, very romantic, and it dies far away so that it doesn't give trouble to those little bees that are inside the hive. Wow that's great! The centrifuge has now started.
The idea is to spin those combs at high speed here, and the honey will come out underneath, check it out. Wow, the comb came out dry. Now, this here goes back to the hive to fill it with honey again.
As this honey still has some bee legs, it still has a little wax, it will pass through a sieve, which is a pre-filtering step before packaging. The next stage is now in Campinas. Let's go!
Each place has a different uniform. Here what comes then? Come here.
So, that honey that we collected there at the apiary came here, to Campinas, and is deposited in these cans, stored until use. Is everything full? Yes.
It gets a bit. . .
like sugar, right? Most, perhaps all honeys will crystallize. Crystallization is directly related to the sugars inside.
So honey, basically, it is made up of glucose and fructose. But is this a problem? No, this is not a problem.
This is a natural condition of the product. And heating it in a water bath between 35 and 40 degrees ends up solving it. And you bring the honey back to a fluid condition.
Can we open one to see? Yes. Wow, it smells really good.
Another interesting feature is also the colors. So, each flowering will present a specific color of honey. I see here that there is an orange tree, eucalyptus, it has some names in Latin, the scientific name of the plant.
. . Let's open an orange tree or even grapevine, they'll pick it for us there, and we'll compare the colors.
The nectar ends up generating distinct colors and distinct flavors. So, this one here is wildflower honey, and this one can already see the difference in tone. Wow, this one now looks black.
If we compare the two. . .
This one is orange tree, and this one is from the forest. There are many different flowers. So, we call this one a monofloral culture and this polyfloral one, several flowers.
And will the taste be different too? The flavor is different. From here it goes, in case the honey is crystallized, it goes to the manipulation sector where the decrystallization takes place.
Do you already have some heating up here? Yes The water is warm here. This one is a bath tank, a large water bath tank, it's a tank where the buckets of honey are decrystallized.
And this honey, after decrystallization, by means of a pump, it is sent to tanks for decantation. Where it will be decanted for at least 24 hours. Is this to take away any impurities that may be left over?
Yes. We did that first filtering that brings the raw honey here, then it can crystallize, we are going to decrystallize it in this environment and, with a new filtering, then with a much finer filter, Is there a filter inside? It has.
It comes out of there clear. Decanting makes the honey settle. And it has a little oxygen in the middle of it, and this decantation will expel the oxygen to the surface and make a more peaceful bottling.
I'm going to turn on the filter to see. Look how nice it is. It's going through the filter.
Honey duct here. I can see that the filter is agitated, right? Theoretically, from this point on, it is going to be decanted, but it is a very small amount.
After filtering, it goes to the settling tanks and then it is filled. This one has no more oxygen. It's already clean.
It is already clean, filtered and ready for final consumption. The machine is already programmed to stop at the right time. Half a kilo.
Is there a scale that works together? Yes, it is a scale that is calibrated at that moment for half a kilo of honey and then goes to final sealing. Okay, and does it have a sensor that says it's putting in the next glass?
Yes. Look, here are those who are curious to know how the little honey is made. .
. Then, it is emptied in the same way. The honey was decanted, from there it is sent to these tanks that we have down here and it is made to measure.
And is it a hot iron that goes down there to seal? It's a hot iron that seals honey by honey. And there I realized you have a honey faucet?
A tap of honey. If the guy likes it a lot, he puts his mouth there. .
. And it goes straight. But there is propolis in this one, right?
There's propolis, there's guaco and there's watercress. What is propolis? It is another bee product, it is a product taken from balsam and tree resins, which the bee brings into the hive and the basic purpose is to seal some points and sanitize the hive.
On the world average, do we consume a lot? Is Brazil a good consumer of honey? No, we are way below the world average, despite Brazil producing 40 thousand tons of honey, a good part of them, 25 thousand tons are for export, leaving 15 thousand tons for Brazil.
Giving an average per Brazilian of 60 grams against European averages of over 1 kilo. One kilo per capita. And what are the countries that are addicted to honey?
Switzerland, Germany, the United States are big consumers of honey. Better and healthier than sugar, than consuming sucrose, countries have already understood this. Not Brazil yet.
Argentina consumes 240 grams per capita against our 60. 65 grams. We are still well short of being educated on the issue of consuming honey as food, and not as a medicine, as most Brazilians think.
Yeah, I'll confess that I only eat honey when I have a cough, it's not something that is part of everyday life. Put it in your coffee and put it in your tea.
