Enjoy honeycomb cake

Harvesting honeycomb at Quan Phat Honey facility, Hung Loc commune, Thong Nhat district. Photo: B.Nguyen

To make this product, the beekeeper must design a beehive divided into two floors, in which the beekeeper places a mold on the top floor for the bees to build their nests according to each square honey cake. When harvesting, the beekeeper only needs to take each rectangular honey cake that the bees built and stored themselves. The honey is preserved intact in each cell of natural beeswax, ensuring deliciousness and purity.

Enjoy honey in a new way

Mr. Le Loc Quan, owner of Quan Phat Honey Facility in Hung Loc Commune, Thong Nhat District, has been involved in beekeeping for over 25 years. He is a pioneer in Dong Nai province in making honeycomb products.

Talking about the fate that made him change direction to make honeycomb specialty products, Mr. Quan recalled: “3 years ago, after the Covid-19 pandemic, honey exports encountered many difficulties. This was the time when the beekeeping industry faced a major crisis when the US launched an anti-dumping investigation on Vietnamese honey products and applied sky-high taxes on this product. In addition, honey-importing countries applied trade defense measures and increased technical barriers to this product, causing the beekeeping industry to suffer.”

Mr. Le Loc Quan was awarded a certificate of merit by the Vietnam Beekeeping Association as the creator of the European-standard honeycomb line. Mr. Le Loc Quan was honored by the Dong Nai Farmers' Association as a typical farmer of the province in 2024. The honeycomb of Quan Phat Honey Facility was recognized as a typical Dong Nai agricultural product in 2024.

Quan Phat beekeeping facility faced the common difficulties of the whole industry. Knowing about the honeycomb beekeeping model and this high-end product that is popular in many countries around the world, Mr. Quan started to switch to making this honey specialty.

According to Mr. Quan, bees suck nectar from flowers and leaves to make honey. With traditional honey, in the honey harvest season, bees make honey for 8 days and then farmers harvest it. But with honeycomb honey, farmers have to wait about 25 days to harvest. The extended time for bees to make honey again, this type of honey is more concentrated, is the highest quality honey chosen by bees to store, which in the beekeeping profession is also called ripe honey. Therefore, the nutritional content of this honey is much higher than traditional liquid honey. The honey cakes are taken directly from the fresh beehive itself, completely natural, harvested and packaged in whole cakes without going through the filtering, squeezing, pressing process. The honey on the shelves is still preserved intact in each cell of natural beeswax.

This product is known as a superfood because of its high nutritional content and many healthy ingredients. Honeycomb cake retains all the inherent nutritional ingredients such as pollen, beeswax, and propolis, so it is very delicious and nutritious. According to Mr. Quan, when enjoying honeycomb cake, diners are very excited to chew the soft wax. They can chew and swallow the beeswax because it contains a large amount of propolis, a natural antibiotic that is very good for the digestive system, immunity, beautifying the skin, and making it delicious. Diners can use honeycomb cake with bread, fruit, black tea, etc.

Opportunities for beekeepers

Mr. Quan said that after returning from the army and not knowing what career to choose, he happened to visit a friend who had a beekeeping farm and was very excited to learn that products such as honey, pollen, and royal jelly made by bees are very good for human health. Beekeeping also brings many benefits to the environment and crops as this animal helps pollinate crops and achieve high productivity, so he chose to start a business with beekeeping. Mr. Quan shared: "I am not only learning about beekeeping techniques but also creating a beekeeping profession. That is why I do not hesitate to invest money and time to learn and research to become good at the job."

Mr. Le Loc Quan introduces honeycomb products at his family's bee farm in Hung Loc commune, Thong Nhat district.

Mr. Quan is not afraid to be a pioneer in the shift to raising honeycombs. Raising bees according to this new model, the beekeeper must be skilled and have in-depth technical knowledge to raise healthy bee colonies. This bee colony must be twice or three times larger than a normal bee colony to be able to produce ripe, nutritious honey before storing it in the combs that the beekeeper has previously created. The beekeeper must invest more than the traditional beekeeping model because it requires a lot of effort and money in the care process. Mr. Quan also lets the bees collect nectar from many different types of flowers and leaves to diversify the source of honey, increase the nutritional content of the honey, and at the same time, the taste is also more delicious and rich.

His bee farm has 500 bee colonies. This is where customers from Korea, Europe... come to visit and learn about the farming process. After checking and tasting the products, they highly appreciate the quality of the facility's honey, both in terms of nutritional content, viscosity, and delicious, rich flavor.

As orders increased, he linked up with local bee farms and neighboring provinces and cities to replicate this effective economic model. To date, his chain has expanded to about 30 bee farms in Dong Nai and Binh Phuoc. Beehive beekeeping requires high technical skills, so in this chain he has only selected more than 10 farms to raise this specialty. He is continuing to expand the chain, contributing to the development of beekeeping.

Currently, in the low season, Quan Phat Honey Facility exports about 5 thousand boxes/month, during the peak season, the export volume can increase to about 25-30 thousand boxes/month, mainly exported to the Korean market and some European countries. In the domestic market, the facility mainly sells to tourist areas and resorts - where customers are willing to pay high prices to enjoy the honey that is still stored inside the honeycomb. Currently, the price of honeycomb cakes is 3-4 times higher than that of traditional honey. The demand for this product line in both the domestic and export markets is still very large.

Quan Phat Honey Facility is increasingly diversifying other honey products such as: traditional honey, pollen, royal jelly, refined sugar from honey... The facility focuses on branding and building a brand for the product. Currently, the facility has 2 products that have achieved OCOP certification: centrifuged honey and honeycomb. He invested in factories and machinery to produce more refined honey. This product is good for health, suitable for patients who need to avoid sugar. This product is in dry powder form, easy to distribute, transport and preserve for a long time, much higher value than traditional honey.

Binh Nguyen

Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/dong-nai-cuoi-tuan/202504/thu-vi-thuong-thuc-mat-ong-banh-to-f442f30/