HOW IT'S MADE - FILMED AT SANTEMANE, SIRSI
One line runs from the forest to the label. Scroll, and each stop arrives as you reach it - the bee, the colony, the hive, the bloom, the harvest.
Hejjenu, Kaddi jenu and Thuduve share this forest. Only one of them can be kept.
Thuduve nests in the dark - tree hollows, anthills, cavities in a wall. Give it the right shelter and it will stay.
The European bee the world's commercial honey runs on has been tried in these forests. It fails. This operation is locked to a native bee that produces far less - geography, not marketing.
The mother, the workers and the drones. Wax comes out of the bees themselves - glands beneath the abdomen. They drink honey, digest it, and convert it into wax to build with.
When food is plentiful the mother lays more and the population climbs. The colony raises a new queen cell and splits - roughly half leave with the original mother to found a new hive.
In the wild, colonies are raided by ants and other insects - often they abandon the nest and leave. The box gives them somewhere to hold, on a metal stand ants cannot climb.
Bees build their combs in parallel rows, leaving a set gap - just wide enough for one bee to pass. The frames are built to a measurement the bees decided.
Colour, taste, thickness and how fast it sets all change with the flower, the region and the bee. Some are sweet, some sour, some carry bitterness.
When one species reaches 80–90% flowering, the bees work it almost exclusively - that harvest is monofloral. In mixed bloom no single aroma dominates: not a lesser honey, a different one.
What is taken is surplus - and only when there is enough that removing it leaves the colony fed.
A centrifugal extractor spins the honey out and leaves the comb structure intact, so the bees reuse it instead of building again from nothing.
No smoke, no gloves, no veil, no gown. Move slowly, crush nobody, and they do not sting.
Filmed in the Hegde family's Bee Reserve at Sirsi, Uttara Kannada - the hives, the low-disturbance harvest and the hands that carry it out.
HOW IT'S MADE - FILMED AT SANTEMANE, SIRSI
One line runs from the forest to the label. Scroll, and each stop arrives as you reach it - the bee, the colony, the hive, the bloom, the harvest.
Hejjenu, Kaddi jenu and Thuduve share this forest. Only one of them can be kept.
Thuduve nests in the dark - tree hollows, anthills, cavities in a wall. Give it the right shelter and it will stay.
The European bee the world's commercial honey runs on has been tried in these forests. It fails. This operation is locked to a native bee that produces far less - geography, not marketing.
The mother, the workers and the drones. Wax comes out of the bees themselves - glands beneath the abdomen. They drink honey, digest it, and convert it into wax to build with.
When food is plentiful the mother lays more and the population climbs. The colony raises a new queen cell and splits - roughly half leave with the original mother to found a new hive.
In the wild, colonies are raided by ants and other insects - often they abandon the nest and leave. The box gives them somewhere to hold, on a metal stand ants cannot climb.
Bees build their combs in parallel rows, leaving a set gap - just wide enough for one bee to pass. The frames are built to a measurement the bees decided.
Colour, taste, thickness and how fast it sets all change with the flower, the region and the bee. Some are sweet, some sour, some carry bitterness.
When one species reaches 80–90% flowering, the bees work it almost exclusively - that harvest is monofloral. In mixed bloom no single aroma dominates: not a lesser honey, a different one.
What is taken is surplus - and only when there is enough that removing it leaves the colony fed.
A centrifugal extractor spins the honey out and leaves the comb structure intact, so the bees reuse it instead of building again from nothing.
No smoke, no gloves, no veil, no gown. Move slowly, crush nobody, and they do not sting.
Filmed in the Hegde family's Bee Reserve at Sirsi, Uttara Kannada - the hives, the low-disturbance harvest and the hands that carry it out.