Every year, we keep beeboxes in Coorg—but coffee blooms do not operate on a human calendar; instead blooming after the first showers.
From the moment that rain touches the estate, in 8 to 10 days, the coffee bushes burst into white flowers—post which, a clock starts ticking. Pollination takes place within five to seven hours after the flower opens, and fertilisation is completed within 48 hours after pollination. So the functional window for a bee visit to result in successful pollination is roughly same-day to next-day after the flower opens.
This unpredictably timed, small window is why we don't just place bees and walk away. We had 50 of our beehive boxes set up in this one estate, ready and waiting for that bloom.
A week after the coffee blossomed, our beekeepers went in for the first harvest, suited up and moving box to box, checking frames heavy with capped comb, extracting the honey using a hand-cranked extractor (using centrifugal force & without harming the delicate wax structure of the comb). This video depicts that harvest. From these 50 boxes, we brought back close to 100 kilos of honey this round.
But every harvest we do, such as this one, is very humbling. Because each time, we are reminded that this honey is just a sweet bonus, and the most important thing the bees gave us was in those first few hours after each flower bloomed. Pollination—and in those coffee cherries that would now go on to form.
But there is an Act II to this story. Monsoon is closing in, and these colonies won't survive through it.
Bees don't fly in the rain; their wings can't handle water weight, and their bodies would cool below the temperature they need to fly at all. After the rain stops, flowers take time to recover; scent and nectar concentration don't bounce back instantly. So monsoon usually means a dearth—no food, even though the estate still looks green and full of flowers.
So before the clouds set in, we migrate these very colonies to the plains, where they'll be managed through the off-season until the monsoon is over.
This is the (almost) full extent of what a Managed Beehive Farm actually looks like, through changing seasons. It is a living, dynamic relationship between bees, bloom, and climate, managed with utmost care and love through every stage of the year.
Fifty Boxes, Five Days, and a Harvest in Coorg
