From Hive to Pot
Honey has been used as a healing salve for centuries. It was used by the Egyptians as an embalming fluid and was also given as a gift to the gods. Bees were pretty highly thought of in those days and hieroglyphs suggest they often symbolised royalty.
Fast forward a few years and there is renewed interest in the medicinal properties of honey. Sure we all still love it on a piece of toast or drizzled on crumpets but can it really heal that wound..?? Ashlee is a beekeeper’s daughter and has grown up around bees and honey. She is no stranger to the healing powers of honey and as a child, it was their go-to treatment for cuts, grazes and everything else. And this is Ashlee. She’s sitting in front of one of her Kawakawa trees, another magical ingredient she uses in her balms.
Today, Ashlee is using honey and beeswax from the family business to make boutique skincare, perfectly named, “Beekeeper’s Daughter”. She uses high quality natural products as her base (think coconut oil, sweet almond oil and shea butter) and then adds the magic ingredients; beeswax or honey. And yes…it’s all done in a mixing bowl in her kitchen (BDHQ)!!
The first ever product Ashlee made was the baby balm, which was of course inspired by her own babies. Some of her friends then started asking for some…and the rest is history. I asked Ashlee if she had a particular fave, go-to product and she admits…it’s a tough choice, which is no surprise to me at all. And it turns out that she’s got a soft spot for the Manuka and Green Tea Face Scrub. Why…? Because she loves the way it smells and it leaves her skin so soft she doesn’t need to moisturise afterwards. That sounds good to me…….💛
Ashlee has been a part of the family’s business her whole life and has shared the amazing story of the 2017 Honey Harvest with us. This is how she gets the liquid gold that you’ll find in her beautiful skincare range.
Collecting the Honey
This step is called ‘taking the honey off’. The beekeepers go to all their bee sites (orchards, farms and fields) collecting the boxes that have frames full of honey. Each site will have an original hive too, but that’s always left in place. The bees are shooed out of the boxes and off the frames using bee smokers and leaf blowers before the boxes are transported back to the shed to be stacked and stored. There are 18,500 boxes to collect, so the storage shed is pretty big…!! When all the boxes have been collected, extraction and processing can begin.
Being a bee novice, I get to ask silly questions so I asked Ashlee what happens to the bees after they have been unceremoniously removed from their boxes by a leaf blower. Don’t worry…they are not harmed and always return to their original hive unscathed. Phew…
Scraping and Uncapping
In the extraction room, excess wax is scraped by hand from the tops and bottoms of each box and frame before the frames are put into the uncapper machine. This is where the wax ‘caps’ are taken off the tops of the honeycomb cells to allow access to the honey beneath. Both the scrapings and the caps are melted down and put into tanks to harden. After Ashlee has taken what she needs 😉, the wax is sold.
Pricking
The frames then move down to the pricker machine. The pricker machine has a matrix of little plastic needles that pierce each and every cell of the honeycomb. The machine gently agitates the needles, breaking the surface tension of the honey to loosen it ready for it to be spun out.
Spinning
Each frame is then put into the Spinner. It does exactly as the name suggests and spins the frames at high speed. The honey is drawn out of the cells by the centrifugal force created by the fast spinning. It’s starting to look more like honey now but there’s lots of solid wax still present which needs to be filtered out, so on we go to the Corkscrew.
Filtering #1
The corkscrew is the first pass filtering process to remove wax from the honey. The wax is squeezed and pushed through the corkscrew eventually coming out of the end while the honey drips out and is collected in a trough below. None of the wax from these filtering processes goes to waste – it’s all collected and melted down with the scrapings and caps before hardening off to be sold later.
Filtering #2
Now we get to the spin float machine. This is the second centrifugal spinning of the honey which spins what’s left from the first filtration process. The honey (minus the wax) collects on the outside of the drum, and drips through to the waffle tank (honey machinery has some great names don’t you think….??!!)
Filtering #3
The waffle tank gently heats the honey to 35 degrees. The honey and wax move through the machine which has a series of flaps or baffles. The honey goes under one flap then up and over the next. The honey is heavier than the wax, so sinks to the bottom leaving the fine wax floating on top. After passing over/under the baffles about four times, the honey flows through to the next process leaving the wax to be scraped out.
Filtering #4
Yep…yet another filtering process!! And another machine with a cool name; The Hummer. This is the last filtration process which removes any tiny remnants of wax that might still be in the honey. The super smooth, wax free honey goes from this machine into holding tanks before being poured into drums which are then sold to wholesale buyers (cute child not included😉).
And that’s it. That’s how Ashlee gets her hands on the liquid gold which she uses in her skincare range. Have you had a nosey round her Green Elephant Store yet…?? It’s chock full of honey goodness with cleansers, creams and balms for all skin types; there are even some goodies for babies and nursing mums too…!! And of course her entire range is completely natural which is something of special importance to Ashlee since having her two boys.
Ashlee takes huge pride in her work and she knows that a great skincare product should look beautiful, smell amazing and feel fabulous on our skin. And that’s what she delivers.
All images used with kind permission of Beekeeper’s Daughter.
