Honey Extracting

I was on vacation the last couple of weeks. The weekend before we finally got the reward for all this time and effort, OK mostly the bees time and effort. I went out and the girls had finally finished capping off the honey so I snagged the super, brushed all the bees off each frame, brushed all the bees off each frame, and brushed all the bees off each frame (they really didn't want to go and when they finally did they came back quickly). Then I put the super with the brushed off frames in the back of the truck and drove over the hill and then stupidly went to pick some berries. When I came back 20 minutes later there was a swarm of a couple thousand bees buzzing around the truck. I didn't think they would find the honey that far away that fast but an important lesson was learned; if I have more than one task do them all first and THEN do the honey harvest. So I grabbed the other bee suit out of the trailer, put it on, jumped in the truck and took off down the road as fast as I could. Luckily the truck windows were closed so there weren't that many in the truck. When I got to the paved road most of the bees had been lost so I got out took the suit off and got the last few bees out of the truck. One bad decision can really screw up a day - no potato or garlic harvest, only a few berries picked.

That Sunday I called my buddy Tom and my wife and I drove over to get his extractor and other equipment. My sister-in-law came over with extra bottles. The first time with the uncapping knife I dug into the comb pretty deep. Most of the others I actually did pretty well. Then I loaded up 3 frames into the extractor and fired it up. Since it was my first time I didn't know how fast to turn it up and how fast to let it go. I guess I might have done it a bit too fast because we had a blowout! On one frame a big section of comb broke loose from the frame and wires in the foundation that are there to support it. Bummer! I uncapped another and put it in and started it slower. We saw a bit of honey was on the side of the extractor but nothing was coming out the bottom. So I uncapped 3 more and started them going. Finally honey came out. Man that was so exciting! The next thing was we had two sieves to get the wax out. It took forever for it to start going through the first sieve and then it seemed like even longer to start through the second one. Finally all 8 frames were done. It was quite the experience. 2.5 gallons of honey from this one hive! Then we had to clean up everything. There was probably at least 2-3 cups of honey stuck on the sides of the extractor, maybe more. It is a big, heavy stainless steel tank and cleaning it and everything else for 8 frames of honey is not very time effective. Next year when I have 3 hives of honey to extract (hopefully) it will be more efficient. Pictures coming soon...