First like any type of farming you depend on nature, for example the amount of rain during the winter will have an effect on the flowers of the bushes and trees. If there are no flowers, there would be no nectar for the bees to harvest. In the Western Cape we did not get much rain during the winter in 2011, so according to last year's records we harvested less honey than the previous year. This is not just the case in 2011 that was a bad season, if I were to draw a graph of the past 5 years you will see a decrease in our total amount of honey harvest for each season. So honey has become rare but that is not the only reason why honey is so expensive.
The second reason is because of the whole process that honey is going through. So first you must harvest the honey at the beehive, where you collect the frames where the bees store the honey. The frames consist of many wax cells, where the bees store the honey and if the cell is full the bees seal it off. So the next step is to uncap those cells, with a uncapping fork. Then you extract the honey and after extracting the honey you need to filter it and then you can pour it into pots.
Then the third and last reason is about a special and unique little animal, the bee. Did you know that the worker bee (female) produce approximately 2.5 grams of honey in her life, they only live for about 40 days during the season period, and some of them die earlier because they work themselves to death. Just think how many bees you will need to fill up a 1 kilogram pot of honey? Then it will take a bee swarm up to 2 - 3 weeks to produce enough honey for the beekeeper to harvest.
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