Bee culture – Hive – With provision to extract honey
Reexamination Certificate
2002-02-25
2004-06-08
Nguyen, Son T (Department: 3643)
Bee culture
Hive
With provision to extract honey
C449S042000, C449S044000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06746305
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates to packaging of honey produced by honey bees and particularly to a package for honey and the method of preparing the package without the use of human intervention and handling.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
As is well known to those skilled in this technology, honey is a product produced by honey bees that are members of the family Apidea and the honey product is typically collected from bee hives after the bees have produced the honey. The bees reside as a family in a bee hive. The bee family consists of a queen bee whose sole purpose is to lay eggs for producing worker and drone bees. The sole purpose of the worker bee is to continuously produce honey which is an excretion that occurs after the bees have collected nectar from foliage. For the purpose of this invention, it is only the worker bee is the subject matter of this disclosure. Worker bees, as stated above, do little else but produce honey which is a natural phenomenon that occurs through inversion from the nectar obtained from flowers. In commercial operations the beekeeper provides hives which are formed with supers which are mounted on movable frames. The bees excrete the honey and beeswax in the supers and ultimately, the frames are removed from the hives and then inserted into an extractor where they are centrifuged so as to separate the honey from the beeswax. Through discharge outlets on the extractor the honey is collected in drums or the like. The honey collected in the drums is then processed and this is typically done by a processing company whose function is to insert the honey into containers, such as bottles, jars and the like, for distribution and consumer retail sales. In this process the drums or the like are heated so as to change the viscosity of the honey to allow it to freely flow into the bottles or jars.
Obviously, in going from the bee hive to the ultimate container used for distribution and sales, this process or procedure requires the use of human hands or human intervention. Or, in other words, the honey is not unadulterated. In each step, from the bee hive to the extractor, to the drums and to the containers for distribution and sale, the honey has the propensity of being contaminated. Whenever a container, drum, extractor or other equipment is used, it becomes quite possible that foreign matter can get into the honey or to some extent contamination can occur. Moreover, the heating of the honey breaks down the chemical composition of the constituents in the honey which affects its taste and odor.
I have found that there is a demand for the honey product that has not been touched or processed by the human hands or human intervention; that is to say, unadulterated. To this end, I provide a template consisting of a planar wood member with a cut-out located intermediate the top, bottom and opposite sides of the wood member with the cut-out extending clear through from the front face to the back face, and a wax foundation mounted on the back face of the wood member overlies the cut-out portion to define a pocket. A plurality of these wood members are vertically and parallely stacked in a box-like container and removably mounted above a bee hive. It is important that the dimension of the space between adjacent wood members provide passageways for the bees to access the cut-out portion. This space is sufficient to allow the worker bee to traverse the template to reach the cut-out portion but yet not wide enough to allow the queen bee to enter. Also, the space is not sufficiently wide to allow the bee to excrete the honey thereon so that the excretion process only occurs in the cut-out portion. When the cutout portion is completely filled, the template becomes the holder of the honey which is then inserted into a suitable package for distribution and sale. Obviously, unlike the heretoforeknown commercial processes, the honey processed in accordance with this invention requires no additional processing and alleviates the necessity of being handled by human beings, other than removing the template from the box-like container without touching the honey and inserting it into a package or box for commercial sales.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of this invention is to provide an improved honey for retail sales.
A feature of this invention is to package honey into a template formed from a planar wood having a cut-out portion for receiving the honey.
Another object of this invention is to provide a method for packaging unadulterated honey for commercial retail sales. The method consists of vertically stacking a plurality of planar wood templates with a recess, sealed at one end to define a pocket, providing space between templates sufficiently wide to allow the passage of only worker bees and sufficiently narrow to prevent worker bees from excreting honey thereon where the passages allow egress into the recess portion where the honey is excreted and then, packaging the template in a box for commercial retail distribution and sales.
REFERENCES:
patent: 1797021 (1931-03-01), Reif
patent: 1882938 (1932-10-01), Root
patent: 1973208 (1934-09-01), Hilbert
patent: 2591328 (1952-04-01), Yanik
patent: 4195379 (1980-04-01), Krasnik
patent: 4639962 (1987-02-01), Hogg
patent: 5291990 (1994-03-01), Sejzer
Friedland Norman
Nguyen Son T
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