Buzzing Blissfully with the Bees

Island Beehive at Kingscote of Kangaroo Island

Located just off the road from Kingscote (near the Emu Bay Lavender Farm) is Island Beehive – an organic honey farm located at Kangaroo Island. One of the biggest organic honey producers in Australia, Island Beehive produced and distributed a wide range of apian products like honey, royal jelly, propolis, beeswax candles, candies, pollen and more. Apparently, some claim that honey is one of the best foods offered by nature, with antibacterial and wound-healing properties. A dollop of honey (together with lemon) is also widely used as a cure for a bad throat.

The retail shop of the apiary offered a lot more than just honey. Yellow and black were the thematic colours here.

We immediately joined a tour upon reaching the farm, and scurried to see what all the fuss was about here.

Tina and Ethan (with yellow balloon in hand) decided to take a closer look. What are they looking at?

Bees! Lots and lots of busy, buzzing, and bustling bees. Most of them were worker bees, with only one queen bee in the hive.

Along the way, we saw educational displays like this beekeeper costume which probably helped to protect him or her from stings.

Mounted displays like this tell us the life cycle of a bee, as well as the different aspects of its highly social behaviour in a hive.

The most premium food in a hive is the royal jelly. This substance has purportedly legendary life giving properties like the lowering of cholesterol, fighting of bacteria and anti-inflammation.

If you think living in a public HDB flat was stifling, imagine if you are literally living in boxes like these honey harvesting insects.

Within each panel are lots of honeycombs made from beeswax, all diametrically hexagonal in shape and equal in size. The engineering feats of these social insects are truly remarkable.

We were next brought to the equipment room, where raw honey was extracted and purified.

From first glance, these tubes and sticks resemble medieval instruments of torture!

A metal tub used for clarifying honey.

Raw beeswax were melted to form yellow blocks like this.

Here are tubs and boxes of honey before they were labelled and shipped in crates to the rest of the world.

Naturally, the ideal end to a busy day is coated with sticky honey, freely available for tasting.

Now, isn’t that a sweet end to a bee-sy day at the apiary?