Extracting Honey

Extracting honey is a long and sticky practice but with the right knowledge and experience it can become a fast and clean procedure.

The first thing you need to do is uncap the cells on the Frame. If you are able to take the frame of honey off of the hive before the bees cap it congratulations! You just cut off a BUNCH of time off of this process and saved yourself a big mess. If you got your honey off of the hive after it was capped that is fine too, at least you know that your honey isn’t too wet and you don’t need to worry about it fermenting. Tip: Always check the water content in your honey using a tool called a refractometer before you extract it. If there is too much water the honey will ferment. Fermented honey is completely safe, people just don’t like the flavor usually.

I like to use a bucket bench (see picture below) to hold my frame while I am uncapping the cells. The bench sits on the lip of a bucket which then collects any drips of honey and wax that fall off of your frame. Tip: uncap one side of the frame then spin it out (as seen in the next step) after that uncap the other side, this reduces the amount of honey that drips off of the frame while you uncap it.

Next you will need an extractor. If you don’t have one you may be able to borrow one from your local beekeeping club. An extractor spins the frames and uses centrifugal force to pull the honey out of the cells. Put your frame into the extractor with the top of the frame pointing the opposite way that the extractor spins. Why? Because the bees build cells up at a slight angle to keep the honey from poring out when the frame is sitting up in the hive. if you put the frame pointing the way that the extractor spins, the upward angle of the cells will keep the honey in the frames, while if you point the top of the frame opposite of the way the extractor spins the honey will flow up the angle of the cells and into the extractor.

After you are done spinning all your frames get a bucket with strainers on top and set it under the spout of the extractor. Open the spout and the honey will flow out of the extractor, through the strainer, and into the bucket. the strainer will keep out any wax or dead bee parts that would go into your honey. Tip: choose a bucket with a spout just like your extractor, this will allow you to bottle honey directly from the bucket.

When all is said and done clean your equipment with warm or boiling water, this will clean off the sticky honey and extra wax without leaving a bad taste that soap or rubbing alcohol would leave. Don’t worry about getting things perfectly clean, germs and bacteria can’t live on honey so you don’t need to fear those! The frames can be hard to clean so put them back on a hive and let the bees clean them for you, they will take the extra honey back into their stores for winter.

If you have any further questions feel free to contact Judahowen@icloud.com!