What Does the Novice Beekeeper Need to Know?

Number 7

"Honey Extraction"

"And Why"

First consult your mentor. Maybe even help him with his honey.

What is your objective? What type of honey product do you want? What is your marketing strategy? Do want hive by-products (wax, propolis, medicinal honey) How many dollars do you have to spend on equipment?

There are basically 3 styles of honey products you can get out of your hive. Clarified liquid honey, chunks of comb with honey, and creamed honey.

You need to know what your marketing strategy is going to be even before you finally have a honey super full of honey. Are you going to just produce honey for family and friends? Are you going to sell bulk honey not in fancy containers? Are you going to be the ultimate honey vender at the local farmers market and through the internet?

The basic equipment for a standard small beekeeper necessary is:

A large bowl A colander two 5 gal. Buckets A large knife 5 gal. paint strainer bag from the paint store

You cut the comb out of the frames. Place the chunks of comb in the paint filter bag. Put the colander over the large bowl or the bucket, depending on how many frames you are doing. Working over the bowl/bucket mush the comb so the honey is freed from the cells. Place the filter bag of comb/honey in the colander and let it drip down. It will take 1-3 days for all the honey to get into the bowl/bucket. Mush the comb more as necessary. Remove the empty comb from the filter bag and place it on a tray outside so the bees can lick up the remaining honey and take it home for food.

To produce a few bottles of honey for family and friends the equipment is:

A Decapping tank Decapping knife (hot or cold) Hand operated centrifuge Some 5 gal. buckets at least on set of screen filters Some canning jars or honey bottles

A hot knife or electric decapper may be nice depending on how many bee hives you are working.

Decap the frames over the decapping tank. This will catch the comb caps and any honey dripping all over the place. Place the frames in the centrifuge and sling out the honey. You will need your 200-500 micron filter between the centrifuge exit and the 5 gal. bucket to catch extraneous wax particles and bee antennae. Close the exit valve on the centrifuge as the bucket gets ¾ full. You need to let the screen filter drain down. Then put the filter on another bucket and repeat until all frames are extracted.

A full 5 gal. bucket holds 60 lbs. of honey. A shallow honey super holds about 20 lbs. of honey. A medium super holds 30 lbs. of honey and a deep holds more than 80 lbs. If you have more than one shallow super you will need multiple buckets. Multiple filter screen sets are convenient as one can be draining down while you are filling another bucket. At least one bucket with a drain valve is handy for bottling later.

If you are interested in the two sub-types of cut comb honey you will need a little different set up. Start with using "thin surplus" foundation, or foundationless frames to draw out the comb for the bees to fill with honey. Then you will need a lipped tray (large flat sheet cake pan) and a honey comb cutting device (either a knife or square cookie cutter tool). You will need containers to put the comb into (boxes or wide mouth canning jars with honey). And lots of rags for cleaning up. Maybe, you want a drip down rack if you want real nice looking boxed comb.

Lay the frame on the cake pan. Cut into the desired sizes. Place on drain down pan if used. When it quits dripping place it into the special sized box for storage/sale. I put the chunk in the box without draining down. Looks messier, but the customer gets more honey.

If you are putting chunk comb honey into a widemouthed canning jar, place the comb in the jar before filling it with honey. If you don't, it will spill all over the place. If you want award winning chunk honey in the jar, place a pie plate on a one burner hot plate on low heat. Place the jar in the pie plate so the bottom of the jar gets 100^o. Remove the jar from the pie pan. Place the chunk comb perfectly centered and vertical in the jar. The heat will melt a little wax and cool rapidly holding the chunk nicely centered. Now fill the jar with honey up to the fill ring. Screw on the lid and you are done.

Mushed honey can just be stored in wide mouthed canning jars. Narrow mouth jars can be hard to work with as there is usually more wax in mushed honey than clarified centrifugally processed honey.

When processing your honey, a warm room is best. Honey flows readily at 90^o summer temperatures.

Five gallon Buckets are heavy and hard to lift. Storing your extracted honey in 2 ½-3 gal. buckets makes it easier to stack and move around. A few buckets with valves in the bottom are handy for bottling. However, I have never met a plastic valve that did not leak. Don't store honey in a bucket with a valve over night that does not have a catch bucket under it.

Straining your honey is a good idea just to remove random chunks of comb and bee body parts. Purely your choice. The screen filter sets with a 200 micron and a 500 micron "screen" filter are just right for this job. I do not recommend filtering your honey lower than this. Especially, don't heat your honey to filter it or make it flow faster. The color and taste of honey is in the pollen that is in the honey. Removing the pollen with a super fine filter will change the flavor. Heating will damage the pollen particles and change the honey color darker.

For bulk storage I just use stacks of buckets. Some people go to nice large stainless steel vats with brass valves. These truly are nice, but expensive.

You will have bees wax left over as a by-product. You should render it and mold it into blocks for storage and/or sale. See wax production for those instructions.

The more hives you have and the more efficient you want to be, determines what type of equipment you will need.