Honey Combs, The Art of Nature!!

Hey folks not only is this very pretty but very expensive, we dont call honey liquid gold for nothing. We sell our honey wholesale at R120 per kg some shops sell 500 grams for R120, so yes we are cheap relative to that and our honey is pure and good, not watered down, irradiated etc, just pure golden goodness!

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We normally take out the combs once they have been capped by the bees, this is uncapped honey but around 30% uncapped mixed with the capped stuff is great as its lasts longer in a liquid state, all true raw honey will crystalize with time!

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The top comb quarter built we took it out as we had to change the super to another size and these frames didnt fit in the new super.. Below all the capped full frames of delicios honey, on this harvest we got around 40 kgs, amazing right?

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A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal prismatic wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen.

Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about 8.4 lb (3.8 kg) of honey to secrete 1 lb (454 g) of wax,[1] so it makes economic sense to return the wax to the hive after harvesting the honey. The structure of the comb may be left basically intact when honey is extracted from it by uncapping and spinning in a centrifugal machine—the honey extractor. If the honeycomb is too worn out, the wax can be reused in a number of ways, including making sheets of comb foundation with hexagonal pattern. Such foundation sheets allow the bees to build the comb with less effort, and the hexagonal pattern of worker-sized cell bases discourages the bees from building the larger drone cells.

"Artificial honeycomb" foundation plate in which bees have already completed some cells
Fresh, new comb is sometimes sold and used intact as comb honey, especially if the honey is being spread on bread rather than used in cooking or as a sweetener.

Broodcomb becomes dark over time, because of cocoons and shed larval skins embedded in the cells, and the tracking of many feet, called travel stain[2] by beekeepers when seen on frames of comb honey. Honeycomb in the "supers" that are not used for brood (e.g. by the placement of a queen excluder) stays light-colored.

Numerous wasps, especially Polistinae and Vespinae, construct hexagonal prism-packed combs made of paper instead of wax; in some species (such as Brachygastra mellifica), honey is stored in the nest, thus technically forming a paper honeycomb. However, the term "honeycomb" is not often used for such structures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb

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The axes of honeycomb cells are always nearly horizontal, with the open end higher than the back end. The open end of a cell is typically referred to as the top of the cell, while the opposite end is called the bottom. The cells slope slightly upwards, between 9 and 14°, towards the open ends.[citation needed]

Two possible explanations exist as to why honeycomb is composed of hexagons, rather than any other shape. First, the hexagonal tiling creates a partition with equal-sized cells, while minimizing the total perimeter of the cells. Known in geometry as the honeycomb conjecture, this was given by Jan Brożek and proved much later by Thomas Hales. Thus, a hexagonal structure uses the least material to create a lattice of cells within a given volume. A second reason, given by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, is that the shape simply results from the process of individual bees putting cells together: somewhat analogous to the boundary shapes created in a field of soap bubbles. In support of this, he notes that queen cells, which are constructed singly, are irregular and lumpy with no apparent attempt at efficiency.[3]

The closed ends of the honeycomb cells are also an example of geometric efficiency, though three-dimensional.[4] The ends are trihedral (i.e., composed of three planes) sections of rhombic dodecahedra, with the dihedral angles of all adjacent surfaces measuring 120°, the angle that minimizes surface area for a given volume. (The angle formed by the edges at the pyramidal apex, known as the tetrahedral angle, is approximately 109° 28' 16" (= arccos(−1/3)).) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb

Below half capped and half uncapped honey at the bottom, pretty right?

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Nature the incredible!

Love and light, may you be abundantly blessed and have an amazing week ahead!

Cheer$;)

Credits www.wikipedia.org



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