After consecutive years of drought resulting in poor honey flows, 2016 turned out OK. First year beekeepers are told not to expect any honey, but my strong hive did manage to fill one honey super. All told, I bottled 286 ounces (2.23 gallons) of honey!
Here’s my first jar of honey! It’s a very dark honey and tastes delicious.
Today was a big bee day. I headed to A-Z Hardware in Grass Valley where I saw a powdered sugar treatment demonstration for Varroa mites, then afterward headed to the honey house where I harvested my honey. Below is a picture of the honey super with frames of capped honey.
Above is the uncapping tub. This is where the wax cap is removed to expose the cells of honey. As you can see, it’s a messy, sticky, honey and waxy mess. The tub has holes where the honey drains so there is no waste.
This is the inside of the extractor. Three frames in, seven more to go.
And here is the honey! It’s strained through two different sized mesh to remove any wax, clumps of pollen and bee debris.
And here is my bucket of honey! I harvested approximatey two gallons of honey from one honey super. I can’t get over how dark it is! Now it’s time to purchase jars and design my label.
The experience of harvesting honey can be summarized in one word, HOT. Literally! The honey house is kept over 90 degrees so the wax is easy to cut and the honey can flow effortlessly. It took me two hours to extract one honey super and clean the equipment. Imagine working in a sauna and you will know what the conditions were like. I was completely drenched from head to toe and probably dropped a few pounds of water weight before I was done. To make matters worse, the honey house had many bees inside and I was stung three times!
When I returned home I put the honey super back on the hive where the bees will keep busy cleaning up the frames and repairing the honeycomb. At this point I was tired and didn’t take the time to light my smoker so the bees were on high alert when I opened the hive. Ended the day with one more sting, four total for the day…an all time high!
Last weekend I attended another great workshop put on by Dan Wheat. This time we were in the honey house to observe the process of extracting honey. It was hot, both outside as well as in the honey house, which is heated into the 90s keeping the wax soft and the honey viscosity thin and runny.
Above is a stack of honey supers filled with frames of capped honey.
Uncapping is the process of removing the top layer, or cap, of honeycomb exposing the individual cells full of honey. The uncapping hot knife is electric and very hot. The technique calls for letting the hot knife do the work. Move slowly and let it melt through. As the cap is sliced off, it falls into the draining tub below. Catching the wax and allowing the honey to drain and collect .
After the majority of cap has been removed using the hot knife, the remainder of uncapped cells are scraped using a tine uncapping fork.
This frame is now ready to be placed inside the electric honey extractor.
This extractor can hold up to 12 frames. When full, the lid is closed then turned on, slow at first, faster later. The time in the extractor was around 12-15 minutes. After being spun from the cells, the honey drips and collects at the bottom of the tank.
The light underneath helps keep the honey warm and runny making it easier to work with. Once the extracting is done a 5-gallon bucket is placed underneath the black valve.
This is the double mesh sieve placed on top of the 5-gallon bucket. The top mesh is coarse, the bottom mesh finer.
Thank you Dan and Jose for walking us through the honey extraction process! So much to learn the first year!!!
