Bilut Valley Bee Farm Honey - Before It Reaches You (Part 2)

Honey is loved and consumed by people all over the world, as an alternative to sugar in their beverage and confectionery, as a condiment to their sweets and desserts, as a beauty aid, and for many, for their medicinal and healing properties.

As meliponine honey contains high amounts of antioxidants, in fact the highest for phenolic acid, it's almost a panacea for ailments and diseases, even chronic ones as proven by extensive clinical and medical reserach. As such, it is our fervent wish to offer a premium brand of organic, raw honey that is hygienically harvested, stored and packed.

Good Beekeeping Practices (GBP) are strictly adhered to. Unlike in the United States where they have established a standard known as Best Management Practices for Beekeeping, our GBP is not a standard regulated by any authority, simply because there is none in existence in Malaysia. We had created a reference for ourselves, one which we impose on ourselves.

No bare hands touching the insides of the toppings, please. We've seen enough of dirty fingernails of beekeepers in other bee farms. But the good side of seeing that, it had actually led us to be desirous of running our own farm.

The bottles of honey are quickly placed in a cooler bag. This is to avoid the heat from causing the honey to ferment which will make it frothy and taste rancid. Fermentation is inevitable when there is more than 18% moisture in the honey. Keeping the bottles in the cooler bag will reduce the process to the minimum during transportation from the farm to the clinic where the honey is bottled. 

The bag is secured and pests like ants are kept safely away. Keeping them in this bag also keeps the sunlight from damaging the delicate honey. We want to be sure that the honey stays in it's raw form as closely as possible to ensure all the enzymes are kept intact.

For storage purposes, we use new, cleaned and sterlised bottles. They are prepared the same way as the bottles that are used for packaging which we had shown on Part 1 of this post. Call us snooty if you want but as we said earlier, we won't compromise on hygiene so we do not want to use recycled containers for this purpose. It has been known that some honey samples taken for an analysis had shown traces of foreign and hazardous matter such as lead, and it was suspected that the source was the storage container.

New, clean and fresh bottles for storing our honey that you take home.

Tools used to harvest the honey as well as those used in our meliponiculturing and beescaping activities are washed and sterilised regularly with a cleaning agent and an antiseptic. We choose Melamagic and  Soluguard by The Melaleuca Company for these purposes as they are organic. This is one of the important procedures required under our own GBP

It is a seemingly simple procedure but it can prevent the hives, toppings, plants and the whole farm in general from being infested by fungus, parasites, and all other organisms that may destroy the bees, the brood cells or the plants. If this happens, God forbid, it will be nothing less than a devastation. This is one of the many valuable lessons learnt at the Beescape Workshop.
  

Once the honey is brought back from the farm, it is kept in a chiller for not less than 48 hours before it is packed in amber botlles. When they reach our consumers, they are to be kept in refrigeration or in a cool place.

There is no heating or dehydration process using heat as this may destroy precious enzymes in the honey. This is the true definition of raw, unfiltered honey. This is the honey we want you to experience and enjoy.

  
 

Identifying Species of Meliponines - Why It's Crucial

Last month we wrote about Beescape and the importance of this element in meliponiculture. This time, our post is focussed on the need for a meliponiculturist to be able to identify the different species of meliponines. Different species have different behaviours and different needs to survive and flourish, so it is of utmost importance to know the types of bees we are culturing.

To be really successful in meliponiculture, a serious meliponiculturist needs to be widely knowledgeble about the subject and everything related to it. In order to make the honey industry in Malaysia sustain in the long term and to achieve global acceptance of our products, we should aim to be real professionals in this field.

Without having the relevant knowledge, it would be impossible to maintain a consistent supply of good quality honey. Worse yet, mismanagement and poor management of meliponines will result in a decline in their population, not only reducing the production of honey but upsetting the very ecosystem that we survive on.

Many colonies, perhaps in the thousands by now, have been destroyed because people were ignorant about the species they were culturing and the types of trees and resins that are required by them. The species from the genus Tetrigona for example, have a unique hive building system, in that they require resin from Dipterocarp trees. The entrances, honey pots and pillars are hard and brittle, thus they are dubbed the crystal species. Many colonies of this genus have been removed from their natural habitat and carelessly an ignorantly cultured in a location void of any source of resin, resulting in the meliponines being forced to find alternative sources, failing which the colony will just collapse.

To love your bees is to know them.