Honey in Harn

The following article is based heavily on e-mail and web research. The article explains the job of the beekeeper in the fictional world of Hârn. While based on real-world information, it should not be taken as 100% fact.

Contributors to this article:  Jonathan M Davidson (sablefox@globalnet.co.uk), John Sgammato (sgammato@ADELPHIA.NET ), Andy Staples (andy.staples@MINARSAS.DEMON.CO.UK ), Peter Leitch (peter@sodan.com.au ), E.M. Edwards (eric10@concentric.net ), The Honey website (www.honey.com ),

This article is based on the questions asked by  James A. Chokey jchokey@leland.stanford.edu. To see the original posts refer to honey notes.html

Honey making, is a major industry in most mannors on the island of Hârn. As with other forms of agriculture, this industry is not part of the guild structure. Instead it is a source of raw materials that is sold to the following guilds:

There are four types of honey produced by the skeps (bee-hives):

Each mannor with an orchard, or large field of nearby flowers probably has a beekeeper as one of the unfree tennants on the land. The beekeeper is responsible for placing the skeps, protecting them throughout the winter, gathering the honey each spring, summer and fall and catching swarms if the manor needs more bees. In return for his services, his fees and rents are reduced. The manor holder sells the produced honey at a variety of rates depending on availability of the season.

Item Average Price in Market
honey/gal 12d
wax/lb 8d
comb honey/lb 20d
cut comb/lb 15d
cream honey 15d

A few smaller mannors may rely on wild skeps in the woods. Such skepts are often found in large trees with wrotted cores. The amount of honey from such skeps fluxuates greatly from year to year and season to seaon. Usually mannors rely on privately owned skepts, leaving their tennants to raid wild skeps as part of their herb-right.

The beekeeper learns his trade through an apprentiship of 3-5 years. Unfree tennants with such crafts are sought out by land owners forming new mannors, or interested in producing honey. While not paid, the beekeeper's rents and fees are reduced in comparison to other unfree tennants. In Rethem beekeepers are traditionally slaves that are part of the land owner's household. Manor holders are often taxed in honey, or produce by their lieges. There are free beekeepers in Tharda, and a small clan in Chybisa that specializes in honey producing. Both groups tend bees on other people's land. In return for polinating their crops, these free beekeepers can then sell the honey on the open market. The free beekeepers in Tharda traditionally give the land owner a discount and first crack at purchasing their honey.

A skep is a conical arrangement of straw. By twisting straw into ropes and coiling them into a cone, the beekeeper creates the perfect bee home. Often such coils were arranged and then either sewn, or waxed (using some other form of wax than beeswax) into shape. A board was placed beneath the cone so that the hive would not be sitting on the ground. The coil was not affixed to the board, and the beekeeper could lift the skep to have access to the hive beneath.

Some manors use the excavated trunks of trees are used for hives. Logs a foot or more in diamter and nine feet long are scooped or bored for a length of six feet from one end, the bore being from six to eight inches in diameter. A longitudinal slit is made in the hollow cylinder nearly the whole length and four inches wide.Into this slit is fitted a (removable - my note, john) slip of wood with notches on the edges large enough to admit a single bee...The top being covered, the trunk is set upright with the opening toward the south. Sections of hollow trees are often used in this country for hives.

Skep are normally permanent. The only known location where skep are moved, is in Tharda. The free beekeepers move their skep several times a year to help small villas assure good polination of their crop and so that the bees feast on only one type of plant during the season. This tends to improve the flavour of their honey. Skep are placed either in the center of orchards, or flowering fields, or to one side. Bees have been known to travel great distances to find a new source of food. Part of the beekeeper's education is to be able to determne where to place the skep so that the bees feed off of a specific parsel of land.

The bees visit different plants throughtout the year. In early spring they visit wildflowers, wild berries, and nut and fruit trees. In the summer they visit planted grains, herbs and vegetables as well as wildflowers. In the fall they visit second growth grains and wildflowers. The color and flavor of honeys differ depending on the source visited by the honey bees. The color ranges from nearly colorless to dark brown, and the flavor varies from delectably mild to distinctively bold, depending on where the honey bees "buzzed."

The productivity of an orchard populated by bees is about 1/3 higher than an orchard of the same size without bees. The Free beekeepers of Tharda claim the same ratio is the same for all crops.

Whenever a beekeeper needs new bees, he must know how to go out into the wild and catch a swarm. There are several schools of thought on how to do this, but the easiest way is to intice a spring or summer swarm. The beekeeper will hollow out large chunks of wood and leave them hanging just up off the ground, usually near a bunch of wildflowers, or any location he belives bees will visit. Once the swarm establishes themselves, the beekeeper clams the swarm with smoke and transfers their hive structure from the wood to a skep. The wood is then burned to assure no bees become confused.

A Beekeeper's Yearly duties

FALL: Fall marks both the end and beginning of the annual beekeeping cycle. As beekeepers are completing their autumn honey harvest, they are also preparing for the coming year. Beekeepers check their hives to ensure that bees are protected from the chill and damp of winter. Since bees cannot find sources of nectar and pollen in the winter, beekeepers must also provide enough honey or syrup to sustain the bees until spring.

WINTER: During the winter, beekeepers monitor hives to ensure the honey bees are fed, have sufficient water and are safe from the elements. If bees are wintered outdoors, beekeepers provide thermal insulation for the hives which is waterproof and absorbs the sun's heat. Sometimes, beekeepers place their hives in special buildings equipped with automatic temperature and ventilation controls.

SPRING: By spring, honey bees are actively building the population of the colony, collecting pollen to nurture their young and collecting nectar to make honey. It is the natural instinct of honey bees to hoard food, which means a healthy colony will make plenty of surplus honey. During honey flow--the period when plants are producing nectar--most beekeepers visit their hives once a week to check honey production. Beekeepers move hives to take advantage of abundant nectar sources. Many beekeepers also move hives to pollinate fruit, vegetables, oilseed and legume seed crops. The value of honey bee pollination to U.S. Agriculture is over $10 billion, according to a recent Cornell University study.

SUMMER: A typical honey bee colony contains an average of 50,000 or more bees. As summer progresses, the hive population will reach its peak, sometimes becoming overcrowded. Bees react to overcrowding by swarming. Swarming is when some of the colony's workers will leave the hive along with the queen to find a new home. The remaining worker bees feed royal jelly to a developing larvae which becomes the new queen. Honey bees' genetic predisposition to swarming keeps beekeepers busy with swarm prevention and control activities during the summer. From honey flow to honey harvest, a beekeeper's work never ends. Beekeepers manage honey bees for both crop pollination and honey production. They provide their bees with shelter, sources of nectar and pollen, water, shade, warmth and protection.

[This Information Is A Courtesy Of The National Honey Board]

Honey is processed only in so much as it takes to press the honey out of the honeycomb. For this the beekeeper uses several layers of cloth (muslin) or a honeypress. Either way the honeycomb is compressed and the honey dripps out while the bees wax remains in place. A small single skep can produce 10lbs a year of honey. An average manor would have 4-5 skeps scattered throughout the land.

Honey is the most common form of sweetner found on Hârn. Sugar beets are more expensive to grow, and cultivate. Malting grain is a tedius and tricky task performed by specalist maltsters (of the Innkeeper's Guild) who produce the sweet sticky vicous liqur that is produced when you let garin sprout and then wash out all the sugars. This malt is used to make ale, but is also used by the Millers as a sweetner and to make malt vinegar by the Innkeepers.

Honey and beeswax is commonly used as the basis for salves and ointments. By slowly heating the honey and combining a few drops of the tincture of healing herbs (such as Saxifage, St. John's Wort of Adder's Tonge, Kargele or Berilik) you will get a sticky salve to put on cuts, grazes and other open wounds. With care, this will keep the wounds from becoming infected and speeed healing. Honey, by itself, is also very good for respiratory diesase; but is even better when combined with a decoction of equal parts Colt's Foot and Marsh Mallow. It soothes the throat and makes the medicine taste sweeter.

Because honey is a very powerful source of carbohydrates and is easily absorbed by the body, it is especially good for nursing extremely malnourished people back to health. The absorption of honey doesn't overtax the patient's system, doesn't produce much (if any) waste product and gives the body the energy it needs to heal itself. In combination with other herbs that help fight infections and strengthen the blood, honey is critical to the success of such healing.

Honey and wax are used in many other things. For example, lozenges are like the modern-day cough lolly (candy or drop). One method for giving patients a mixture of dried, powdered herbs was to make a capsule of beeswax, fill the capsule, seal and coat with flour. This introduced a powerful dosage of the herbal mix directly into the stomach and thus into the bloodstream. Another method is to combine a few drops of a tincture (say for haemorrhoids) with melted beeswax, pour the mixture into bullet-shaped moulds about the size of your little finger and allow to cool (actually, get them as cold as possible). Used as a suppository, the body's own heat melts the beeswax and so releases the herbal medicine at the site where it is needed most.

Beeswax is used to cast metal statues and figures. First the object to be cast in metal is sculpted in beeswax. The wax is then covered with a wet clay that is baked and hardened. Then the wax is melted away and the clay serves as a metal mold. Beeswax was also used in encaustic paintings. The painters used an iron plate, heated from underneath with charcoal which melted the beeswax and kept it liquid. Powdered pigments were mixed with the liquid wax and hten applied to the canvas. The finished paintings was subjected tot he sun's heat an ththe whole painting was "burned in" or blended, thus the word encaustic. There are thousands of uses for beeswax. As a pliable wax that has no foul odeur nor resin, it is very popular for everything from grafting plants together to waxing threads before they are run through a needle. Carpenters use beeswax to coat nails being driven into hardwoods. Beeswax is used in furniture polish and to waterproof cloth.

This page was last updated on May 22, 2003
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