Honey Extraction!

Much to our surprise we had an early extraction this year.  There was so much honey on the hives that the bees were starting to eat it in order to make more room to lay eggs.  Usually we would just add another hive box to give them more room, but there were already so may hive boxes stacked up that we couldn't reach to add more (never mind take them down once they fill with honey and are 50 lbs).  So we extracted/harvested the honey.  We expect a second extraction in September and hope it yields just as much honey.  This was an all day event.  We started at 8am.  The kitchen had to be cleaned, the equipment had to be cleaned and set up, and the very heavy hive boxes full of honey needed to be brought up from the field.  Aaron had to carry all the 50 lb boxes up to the house, totaling at least 6 trips, maybe 10, but I was to busy cleaning to count.  Once he got all the boxes to the house he had to go through them and sort out which frames we could use.  The bee's had not capped all of the honey (which must happen before people can eat it).  So those frames had to go back down to the hives.  Aaron was not excited to make three trips back down the hill to the hives, especially since the boxes were still heavy.  But we still ended up with 102 lbs and 4 oz of honey bottled.  Finally, we hit the 100 lb mark.

Some of the heavy honey filled boxes Aaron had to carry across the field and up the hill to the house, 1 at a time.

The extraction set up.  The blue bin is a decapping bin.  You use a hot knife to cut the wax caps off the cells full of honey.  The wax and alittle honey fall into the bottom and can be collected later.  The silver machine is the honey extractor, it is a centrifuge that spins the frames and the honey spins out and falls the bottom.  Below the extractor is a bucket with a filter on-top.  The honey is filtered to remove any wax/debris and is stored in the clean bucket until bottling.

Wax and honey in the decapping bucket.

Here comes the honey!  It looks dark in the picture, it isn't that dark and taste yummy!

the solid stuff is wax, but it cant pass through the filter.  We filter our honey through cheese cloth and a steel honey filter which is under the cheese cloth.

The extractor can hold 6 medium frames or 3 large frames.

Aaron trying hard to get all the honey inside because the bees are working hard to steal it and bring it back to their hives.

Bees everywhere, but they dont sting this far from the hive.

Aaron decapping.

Honey!

All our products.  From left to right, 2oz jar of honey (these are what we give our neighbors to keep the peace), 0.5lb jar ($4), 2lb jar ($13), 1lb jar ($7), and a beeswax candle (not sure if we'll sell these yet, does anyone have an interest?).