Extracting the Harvest!

Uncapping the frames of honey with hot knife

Saturday September 8, 2012

Around 11:00 am, we started extracting our honey. Each frame has to be uncapped: removing the fine layer of wax that the bees diligently placed on every cell full of ripe honey. Ben uses a hot knife which melts the wax,opening the cells and  exposing the honey.                                                                                                                                                             

                                            

      

Uncapped frames are lined up in the extractor

Then the frames are placed vertically in the extractor. This machine uses centrifugal force, so the honey is "ejected" on the side of the extractor gliding to the bottom of the cylinder.

Working hard!

Ben has  a helper:Jamison

  

Soon the honey starts to trickle slowly into our large bucket. We use a double filter, to strain. This keeps the debris and  most of the bees legs and wings out!

It was a rather cool day, so the honey was not flowing so well. Liz got the solution...more heat was  needed. Since she is raising a few chickens, she has those heat lamps and an electric heater. After plugging everything...the fuse could not handle all that power! We had to scale down after tripping the fuses twice! Finally the garage was warm enough, and the honey was percolating nicely.

We collected 185 lb (84kg) of honey, and 1.28 lb (578g) of wax. The honey is still in huge buckets, we will bottle later.
 We had a wonderful day, and were happy to see our friends  Jamison and Liz.