Which produces better honey: beekeeping in round barrels or square barrels?

Many people who know a little about honey know that honey is made by bees collecting nectar and brewing it, but when it comes to beekeeping, not everyone necessarily knows about it. What everyone may have seen is that some keep bees in round honey barrels, and some keep bees in square honey barrels, so today we will talk about which produces better honey: round barrels or square barrels?

Round honey barrel

Square honey barrel

Many people's first impression is that honey produced in round barrels is better than that from square barrels, but is that actually true? Let us carefully analyze it.

In the very early days, there was actually no square barrel beekeeping, so why did square barrel beekeeping appear later? As square barrels developed to today, they already have a more scientific name: movable frame beekeeping. Why do many people think the round barrel beekeeping method is better? Because round barrel beekeeping is a traditional method, an ancient way of keeping bees, and the honey produced this way gives people the impression of being native honey, good honey.

Native honey

Crystallized native honey

Speaking of this, we still have to bring up the types of bees. The bees kept in our country are mainly divided into two major categories. One is the Chinese bee, also called the Chinese honeybee or native bee, and some also call it the wild bee; the other is the Italian bee, a bee species introduced later, also called the Italian honeybee. The Chinese bee is the variety used in our traditional beekeeping, which is to say that the bees kept by our ancestors for generations were Chinese bees, while the Italian bee is a bee species introduced later, and the two bee species differ in the ways they collect nectar and brew honey. Chinese bees are suited to being kept free-range in mountain forests, farmhouses, deep mountains, and even places like cliffs, and they mainly collect multifloral honey. Italian bees usually use large stretches of flowering forest as their nectar source, and if there is too little nectar they cannot survive. Chinese bee honey is all multifloral honey, and harvesting honey is usually done after more than half a year, mostly once a day, while Italian bee honey is extracted once every two days and is mostly single-flower honey. The two also differ in concentration and nutritional composition. Of course, the price differs too.

Italian bee honey

Italian bee honey has lower concentration and is generally in a liquid state

The reason everyone thinks the honey collected by bees kept in round barrels is good is that a concept has been confused here: everyone assumes that round barrel beekeeping means Chinese bees, and square barrel beekeeping means Italian bees. In fact, there is no necessary connection between the two. Because square barrel movable frame beekeeping has many advantages in extracting honey and managing bees, square barrel movable frames are also used in keeping many Chinese bees and native bees.

Although many places claim to use the traditional ancient round barrel beekeeping method, in fact this is only a difference in external appearance, and in essence there is no difference. Native bees and Italian bees are not distinguished by the hive box. Native bees can use round barrel boxes or square boxes. Italian bees can only use square boxes, and most of them are double-layered.

Because square frames have movable honeycombs, it is convenient to inspect, clean, and later extract honey

What distinguishes whether honey is good or bad is mainly not what kind of honey barrel is used. Online, many sellers use honey barrels that are very many and ancient, for example hollowing out a tree to use as a honey barrel. Although it looks like an ancient method, in fact the quality of honey does not depend on the form of the honey barrel. What mainly determines whether honey is good or bad is: first, the bee species; second, the nectar source; third, the timing of honey extraction. So is the honey produced by round barrel beekeeping better than that produced by square barrel beekeeping? The answer to this question is no. Round barrel beekeeping and square barrel beekeeping are only the external form of the beekeeping workshop, and do not determine the quality of the honey produced. It is just like how whether a pair of sneakers is good or bad is not determined by whether the production workshop is in a round factory building or produced in a square factory building.