Return to the small mountain village in 1981

Chapter 55 55 The old hive has big goods

Zhou Huaian cut some mugwort and some dead grass, tied three straw sticks, and handed one to Yang Chunyan, "Wait for me here. When the wild bees come, use this to smoke them."

"Okay!" Yang Chunyan took the straw and handed him the knife and the urea bag. "Use this to hold honey. Be careful not to set the forest on fire."

"Don't worry, I do this all the time. Every time I shovel the weeds around the hive, nothing will happen."

Zhou Huaian walked to the stone crevices with the medicine hoe and saw the wild bees flapping their wings like ants crawling in and out of the stone crevices. The entrance of the cave seemed to have been smoked, "Oh! The old beehive, there is a big goods!"

He picked up the hoe and shoveled away the weeds around the maple tree. He took out a match and lit the dead grass in the handle. After the dead grass burned, thick smoke began to rise.

Wild bees like to find strong stone holes to build their nests. Such holes will not collapse even if they are exposed to wind or rain.

Zhou Huaian hurriedly stuffed straw sticks through the cracks in the rocks and began to smoke the wild bees, and kept fanning the smoke in with leaves.

Countless wild bees flew out of the buzzing cracks in the rocks and flew everywhere in the forest. Some of them were swirling near the beehive, but they didn't dare to get close because of the too much smoke.

This kind of wild bee is a bumble bee, also called Apis cerana, which is a native bee species in China.The soil bee has a small body, but has a strong ability to collect nectar and has strong disease resistance.

The worker bee is about ten millimeters long, with a black head and chest, a yellow-black abdomen, and yellow-brown hairs all over the body.The honey collected by wild bees during this season is flower nectar.

The nectar of flowers is collected from the flowers and gathers the essence of flowers.Baihua honey is a mixed honey made from a variety of flower nectars. The honey is dark in color, fragrant and sweet.

Baihua honey is cold in nature and has heat-clearing effect. It can be used to clear away heart fire, treat irritability and irritability, eliminate heat and detoxify, and moisturize the intestines and relieve constipation.

Zhou Huaian stood aside until fewer and fewer wild bees came out of the cracks in the rocks. He felt that it was almost done and began to clean up the gravel.

He used a hoe to dig up the soil underneath and removed the stones piece by piece. After a while, a hole appeared that allowed him to lean out, and a rich sweet fragrance of honey came to his nostrils.

He lay down at the entrance of the hole and looked inside. Unexpectedly, it was quite big inside. There were large, long and flat honeycombs hanging upside down in the hole.

"I have never found such a good honeycomb. Bashi, it's so Bashi, Bashi's board!" Zhou Huaian happily waved to Yang Chunyan, "Yan'er, come and see, it's such a cozy old hive."

Yang Chunyan heard the sound and came over. Zhou Huaian pulled her with a smile and asked her to come to the entrance of the beehive, "Have a look! Gain some knowledge!"

"Wow~" Yang Chunyan looked at the beehive hanging upside down in the cave and exclaimed, sniffing, "It smells so good!"

Zhou Huaian patted Yang Chunyan, who was looking at the hive, "Okay, go over and have a good rest. We'll leave after I finish cutting."

"Hmm! Be careful!"

"You know, it's not the first time I've dug out honey!"

After Yang Chunyan left, Zhou Huaian rolled up the urea bag and placed it at the entrance of the hole. He looked at the hive and was very happy.

This old hive can harvest a lot of honey and a lot of bee pupae.Bee pupae are a good thing. They are fried until brown and sprinkled with salt and pepper. They taste better than lazy cicadas.

He used a knife to cut off a piece of the nest with a white film on it. The first piece was thirty or forty centimeters long and felt heavy in his hand. He estimated that this piece alone weighed three kilograms. You could tell by looking at the color. This piece is the new nest honey.

Because the cover of the new nest honey is convex, the cover of the old nest honey should be flatter and slightly concave.New nest honey is honey collected by bees recently.

Old nest honey is brewed many times based on new nest honey. The concentration of honey is higher, the color of old nest honey is darker, and there is only a small amount of pollen in the nest spleen.

The honey from the new nest looks as clear as crystal. The spleen of the nest is filled with thick brown-yellow wild honey. When broken, you can see the colorful pollen in the honeycomb.After Zhou Huaian cut off the fourth piece of nest spleen, the color of the nest spleen turned yellowish brown. This piece was old nest honey.

From the cross section, you can see that the old honey in the nest has turned black. The entire nest is very full, and the rich fragrance of nectar surrounds it.

The sweet scent made people happier, and the corners of Zhou Huaian's lips fluttered, immersed in the joy of harvesting honey.

Zhou Huaian recalled that he and Yiding and others had gone up the mountain to look for wild beehives. They had never found such a good hive, and had never harvested such a full spleen. He felt that his wife was lucky, and he gained a lot from going out with her.

At the end of the cutting, I saw a nipple-shaped honeycomb at the lower edge of the spleen. I suddenly remembered that it was the queen's throne of wild bees and stopped quickly.

A bee colony may contain thousands to tens of thousands of bees, but only one queen bee.

If the hive loses its queen, the wild bees will not abandon their hive and will still fly back. The worker bees will still lay eggs, but without the queen, the eggs laid by the worker bees can only hatch into drone bees.

Without the female bees, the nest of wild bees will slowly and slowly decrease until it is destroyed.

Harvesting wild honey also requires martial ethics. You cannot kill chickens to collect eggs. You must leave the seeds so that you can harvest an endless supply of wild honey.

Zhou Huaian happily licked the honey on his hand and walked towards Yang Chunyan with the urea bag in hand, smiling as he walked, "Yan'er, I think I'm very lucky to go up the mountain with you! There are at least more than 20 kilograms of honey in this nest."

Yang Chunyan, who was drowsy while leaning on her back, was woken up by him. When she saw him walking towards him with joy in his eyes, the urea bag in his hand looked heavy. She stood up and said, "There are really a lot of them! I see." look!"

"Most of them are capped honey, Ba Shi De Ban!" Zhou Huaian looked at her with a smile, took a small piece of nest spleen and handed it to her mouth, "Yan'er, try a piece, it's so sweet."

Yang Chunyan glanced at the golden spleen in his hand, hesitated for a moment and then opened her mouth. Zhou Huaian fed the honey spleen into her mouth with a smile on her face.

A thick sweetness and a faint floral fragrance mixed with the smell of Chinese herbal medicine filled Yang Chunyan's mouth, and she hurriedly swallowed a mouthful of honey.

Zhou Huaian looked at her cherry red lips, his throat twitched, and he swallowed involuntarily, "Sweet!"

Yang Chunyan nodded repeatedly: "Sweet, sweet, sweet to the core of my heart. I didn't expect you to have such ability!"

She thought of her past life and really wanted to ask him why he climbed up the cliff to collect cliff honey if he could find wild honeycombs?
In an instant, Zhou Huaian's eyes sparkled when he looked at her, and he placed the bag in front of her, "I'll seal the hole and come back next year to get it."

Yes, you also know how to develop sustainably!
An idea flashed in Yang Chunyan's mind, and she remembered the short video posted by a honey collector in the wild that she saw in her previous life, "Huai'an, is the hole in the hive big? If it's not big, you can dig it bigger for them. I think you should make the hive bigger. , we should produce more honey next year!”

"It's because the hive is so big that we harvest so much honey!" Zhou Huaian said and suddenly realized, "You're right, why didn't I think of enlarging the hive a little? My wife is smarter."

Yang Chunyan looked at him arrogantly, "Just average, third in the world!"

Zhou Huaian looked at her sideways and said, "Be more humble. I'm just complimenting you now, so just stick your tail up!"

Yang Chunyan glared at him angrily, "You're just raising your tail! Hurry up, wait until the sun goes down."

"Roger that!"

Zhou Huaian turned around and went to the beehive, restoring the rocks, mud, and gravel back. Even the mud and grass were not left behind. If he didn't get close to the beehive and take a closer look, no one would notice that it had been touched.

(End of this chapter)