Everyday
500 g glass jar
The standard jar, labelled and sealed. Good for a household, and the right size to give away — which is how most of ours leave the farm.
- Net weight
- 500 g
- Container
- Glass jar
Kroondal · Rustenburg · Magaliesberg
Honey, exactly as the bees made it.
100% pure raw honey from our own hives at the foot of the Magaliesberg — never heated, never processed, nothing artificial added. In 500 g jars and 3.5 kg buckets.
Unheated · Unpasteurised · Straight from the hive
500 g & 3.5 kg
Jars and buckets
100%
Pure and raw
Unprocessed, unpasteurised, straight from the beehive. Raw honey is what bees produce directly in the hive — and that's the only thing that goes into our jars.
0
Heating or additives
Nothing is heated to thin it out, filtered to make it shine, or added to make it go further. It will crystallise over time — that's raw honey behaving exactly as it should.
Ours
Hives, not a middleman
Every jar comes from our own hives in Kroondal. We extract without stressing the bees or destroying their combs, and the proceeds go back into rehoming rescued colonies.
The honey
Two sizes. One kind of honey.
The 500 g jar is the everyday one. The 3.5 kg bucket is for families who go through it, for baking, and for farm stalls and shops that resell.
Bulk
3.5 kg bucket
Seven times the jar, and better value per kilogram. For heavy households, bakers, and shops and farm stalls buying to resell. Ask us about standing orders.
- Net weight
- 3.5 kg
- Container
- Sealed bucket
Ask us for current prices and availability · Collection from Kroondal, or ask about delivery in the Rustenburg area · Reg. no. NW072
Why raw matters
Honey the way it was before we over-processed our food
Raw honey is exactly what it sounds like — honey that is raw, unprocessed, unpasteurised, and straight from the beehive. It is what people used to eat before we began ruining our food with over-processing to extend shelf life and make more money.
The golden juice produced by the bees has been used as food, remedy and delicacy for thousands of years. The bees fly from flower to flower, from tree to tree, collecting nectar and honeydew and turning it into valuable honey. For this work the bees have always been admired.
Our hives
RESQ-B'S is a small, sustainable beekeeping operation in Kroondal, just outside Rustenburg, at the foot of the Magaliesberg — locally owned, operated and grown. We're dedicated to raising bees in a natural and healthy way.
We extract honey from our hives without causing stress to the bees and without harming their combs. Our passion is preserving and growing the honey bee population, and the proceeds from the honey go towards propagating colonies and creating new homes for rescued ones.
Our hives, Kroondal — at the foot of the Magaliesberg
Our bees
A colony is a queen, her drones and thousands of workers
Honey bees are social insects. They produce far more honey than they can eat over winter — which is what makes hives farmable in the first place.
One egg-layer, two years
The largest bee in the colony and the only one that lays. Chosen as a days-old larva and raised on royal jelly, she mates in flight with drones, taking on several million sperm cells that last her whole life — then lays up to 3,000 eggs a day.
All male, no sting
Drones carry no stinger and collect neither pollen nor food. Their one purpose is to mate with the queen. It sounds like an easy job — but if the colony runs short of food, they are the first to be put out.
Every other job in the hive
All female and the smallest bees in the colony. Young workers clean the hive and feed the larvae, then build comb, then receive nectar and pollen from foragers. Later still a worker leaves the hive and spends the rest of her life foraging.
How honey is made
Honey is a sweet, viscous fluid derived from the nectar of flowers. A main effect of bees collecting that nectar is pollination — which is why they matter far beyond the jar.
In the hive the bees use their 'honey stomachs' to ingest and regurgitate the nectar a number of times until it is partially digested, then store it in the honeycomb. Nectar is high in water and natural yeasts which, left alone, would ferment the sugars.
So the comb is left unsealed and the bees fan their wings, creating a strong draft that evaporates much of the water. The sugar concentration rises, fermentation is prevented, and ripe honey — which keeps almost indefinitely — is ready to come out of the hive.
Aloe in flower, winter forage on the Magaliesberg foothills
Also: bee removals
Bees do not have to be killed.
Alongside the honey, we rescue and relocate colonies around Rustenburg. Honey bees are disappearing rapidly, and without them to pollinate, every plant on earth may be affected negatively. We specialise in the removal and relocation of bees and are your contact when it comes to the preservation of these precious animals.
Only a proper resettlement — the nest with its eggs, pupae and larvae, together with the bees and their queen — lets the hive continue at a new location almost without interruption. Nothing gets sprayed.
An established colony inside a discarded dresser — Rustenburg district
The removal, step by step
What actually happens when we arrive
01
Open up and find the brood
We locate the nest and work in to the combs holding the eggs, larvae and pupae — the part of the colony that can't fly away.
02
Cut the comb out intact
The honeycomb with the brood inside is cut out whole rather than scraped, so the developing bees survive the move.
03
Fit it into our frames
Those combs are fitted into the frames of one of our own hive boxes, and the bees — with their queen — are moved in with them.
04
Relocate and settle
The box is closed up and relocated to one of our sites. The colony carries on almost without interruption, and we keep an eye on it.
From the field
Walls, roofs, fence poles, meter boxes, furniture
Bees will build anywhere there's a dry cavity — and almost all of it can be moved rather than destroyed. Every colony here was relocated alive.
Contact
Order honey, or tell us where the bees are
For honey, let us know which size and how many. For a removal, send a photo if you can — it's the fastest way for us to tell you what the job involves.
North West Province, South Africa