The honey do ... done

A while back [June 2011] I mentioned Harold's infatuation with Emily... all the Emilys (Emilies?) buzzing about the place.  He has a thing for busy working women, I guess.

Well, it was time to harvest the honey.  We had been putting it off for a while, because it is a lot of work, results in a sticky kitchen, and finally because we still had enough honey to exceed the demand.  Now, however, there is a festival coming up in Olsburg, and we might sell (unload) some of the honey, so it was time.

This time Harold had borrowed a hand-cranked honey extractor, and we felt rather professional getting the honey out of the combs that way.  It was a lot less mess, once we had set up our work stations in the kitchen.
First though Harold had to go and get the honeycombs, which are on frames inside of supers in beekeeper speak, or at least my limited understanding of that language.  I am allergic to bee sting, and might go into anaphylaxis so I keep far far away from the bees and the hives and those thing.
Well, that sort of robbery of the bee pantry is best done during nice sunshiny weather, when the bees are out working.  Alas, this weekend was dreary, not cold, but overcast and occasionally drizzling.  All the bees are home then doing whatever housekeeping things they do, like feeding the brood or sharpening their stingers.  Harold got the honey-bearing frames somehow, and left a lot of angry bees in the orchard.  I let him check on the chickens and such, since the chicken coop is closest to the bee hives.

Then we set up the extractor and screens and jars, and a wheelbarrow with the frames and a crate for the old frames (they can be reused and refilled, bees are into recycling I guess).  Then it was time to get sticky.

Harold is holding up a frame full of capped honeycomb.  They are heavier than they look.

First the honey comb has to be uncapped.  The extractor came with a great uncapping knife (it actually worked so much better than our knives, heated in water, that Harold chose the chore, while in the past this was traditionally my job, and it made me rather sore too).  There is also a scraper/comb thing that could be used to scrape the caps off, if the bees were drunk when making the comb and it wasn't nice and straight or flush with the frame.  Harold's bees tend to be drunk a lot, and when it comes to engineering, well they have rather lax standards.



Then the frames get set in the extractor, and I cranked for a bit, and after turning the frames over, and cranking some more (it made no music, which is something they should consider for an added feature), the honey was in the extractor and the frames went into the green crate.

After a few frames the honey gets drained out of the bottom of the extractor, through some screens to keep bits of wax and whatnot out, and then it gets dispensed into jars, capped, and done!

There is left over capping wax, that we drain again, to get that honey out, before it goes back to the bees.

We got about 7 gallons (26.5 liters) of honey without trying too hard, and then we were out of jars anyhow.  The kitchen was less sticky than in the past, that extractor made the process a whole lot easier. Before we would scrape all the honeycomb into a pot and heat it gently, skim off the wax and screen the honey.  Naturally it would be all over the kitchen, along with the cooling sticky wax.  I like this 'cold' process much better.