Here is one of those tasks that I have always delegated to the hubby on the homestead, but this year I decided to join in the fun. As a result, I have finally learnt how to extract honey from beehive frames.
For some strange reason, I always thought it was more complicated than it turned out to be. Thank goodness it is not, because that honey is just too delicious. The equipment we used was passed down from my great uncle. It has surely had its days, but still works like a charm.
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Here’s What You’ll Need:
- garbage bag
- beehive frames
- long uncapping knife
- honey strainer
- scrapers
- extractor
- uncapper with teeth
- aluminum foil tray
- jars
Be warned it is going to get real messy and sticky. So before you begin prepare your table or counter by covering it with a garbage bag. The first step is to do your annual frame clean up scraping off your bee glue and any extra wax on the the frames.
Then we move on to uncapping the frames, by removing the thin top layer of beeswax with your serrated knife. You may need to give the cap a little help, before the final cell cleaning using uncapper. You know the frame is heavy when you can see all the the golden honey.
The frames are put in the extractor and it is spun, until no honey falls out of both sides of the frames. The honey collects at the bottom of the extractor, and can be let out via the honey gate through the honey strainer. The straining process needs a lot of patience, take some time. The strained honey is ready to be bottles in your clean new jars and stored away in a cool place.
You can follow step by step instructions on Hubpages, here…
How To Extract Honey From Beehives
You can watch the video below on how to extract honey with an extractor…
You can watch the video below on how to extract honey without extractor…