Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to, as it is the type of honey collected by most beekeepers and consumed by people.

Honey is collected from wild bee colonies, or from domesticated beehives.

Collecting honey is typically achieved by using smoke from a bee smoker to pacify the bees; this causes the bees to attempt to save the resources of the hive from a possible forest fire, and makes them far less aggressive. The honeycomb is removed from the hive and the honey is extracted from that, often using a honey extractor . The honey is then filtered. In many cases the beekeeper will responsibly leave enough honey in the beehive for the colony to survive. If extra food is required to maintain the colony the beekeeper may provide the hive with unprocessed honey or a honey substitute such as sugar water (in the fall) or crystalline sugar (in the winter – a “candyboard”) so that the hive does not starve.

The Food Heritage Foundation (FHF) is a Lebanese non-profit organization aiming at the conservation of Lebanon’s collective memory and indigenous knowledge through the preservation, documentation and revival of Lebanon’s traditional food heritage.

To know more about how to be a beekeeper for a day, Click here.

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