Welcome to Delk Bees!
Maintain the Buzz

Flight of the Bee Straight From the Hive!

All the buzz is about Delk Bees Honey!
Operating out of Santa Cruz, CA, these honeypreneurs are cooking up some new treats !

chECK US oUT AT CAPITOLA MALL FARMERS MARKET
EVERY THURSDAY 9-1pm Capitola/santa cruz http://www.bayareamarkets.com/

daringrod.com prod.

Raw honey, in its most awesome state, which has never been pasteurized or filtered and taken directly from the hive, is packed with nutritional goodness and can be used as all kinds of medicinal remedies. It contains an abundance of vitamins and minerals and is a natural and powerful medicine, both internally and externally.
Delk Bees honey is the best of the best. For the past 25 years, Delk Bees has been making honey in the San Joaquin Valley of Central California. With another honey house in the Mid South of Oklahoma, they total 400 hives.
"Our bees travel from California to Colorado and down to Oklahoma different times of the year. February through April is a busy time for the commercial beekeeper, as a rush to the San Joaquin Valley begins."
Beekeepeers from all over the country ship their bees here to try and place their hives in almond orchards all over the valley and now expanding out of the valley as the word of how lucrative the almond growing and pollination businesses are.
"Our bees are already here in the valley when almond season arrives so they don't have to travel cross country before entering the almonds. They are rested, well fed and ready to pollinate. That is important because as soon as we take the bees out of the almonds they get right back to making honey. Our bees have been pollinating some of the same orchards around the valley for 25 years. We get the hives in early, as soon as the farmers say it's ok. Then we help locate other orchards and beekeepers who haven't placed their hives yet and get them all in before bloom."
When the bloom is finished and the pollination is complete, it's time to move their bees out of the almond orchards and into the Oranges. There, they produce some beautiful tasting Orange Blossom honey that is a little sweeter than the more general wildflower honey. With a hint of citris afterbite, this honey is best consumed on toast or a bagel as a stand alone honey. Orange Blossom honey is the second most popular type of honey while wildflower honey is more commonly used for cofee and teas.
" When we speak about honey, it's important we talk about the bees who make the honey as well. If the bees are tired, hungry, hot, cold or neglected, the quality of the honey they produce is not going to match that of its counterpart. Each bee has to visit over two million flowers to produce 1 pound of honey so it's very important that the bees are rested, well fed and taken care of just like cattle or sheep."
Each honeybee sucks nectar from a blooming flower with their tube like tongue. While in the process, it collects pollen on it's hind legs and as it visits other flowers collecting nectar for the hive, it is transferring pollen from the male flower to the female flower, which is called pollination.
When the bee fills up its honey stomach with nectar, which is different from its feeding belly, they return to their hive to deposit the nectar to other worker bees by regurgitating the nectar so other worker bees can take it and fill the rest of the comb.
Once they fill the cell of a comb with nectar, they will sputter their wings until only 18% of water is left in the nectar. At that point the nectar is thick and sticky and is what we humans call "honey".