I'm often asked how we get the honey out of a packed hive of bees and into jars with nicy shiny jars all ready for the customer. So I thought it deserved a post!
As we approach the end of the honey flow (mid August) we inspect the honey super boxes (the ones at the top) and see how much honey is in them and whether the bees have capped them over. The bees cap their honey when the water content is under 20% - don't ask me how they know! We always leave one full super (11 frames in a national hive) as food for the hive over winter. Everything else we can take and harvest. The process begins by placing some porter bee escapes in the crown board beneath the supers that we plan to take for harvest. A porter bee escape is a 'one-way' system for bees so that they can move down out of the honey super but not back up into it. After 48 hours we return and remove the super with hopefully very few bees. Any remaining bees can be shaken out, brushed off or even removed with a blower.
We then place the super into a wheel barrow, cover it with a cloth and rush it round to our kitchen, aka the "honey room". There are always a few bees left that end up flying around the kitchen trying to make it through the bi-fold doors!
Thereafter, we put on our hair nets, gloves and feet protectors. All equipment involved in the process has to be sterilised first and this includes setting tanks, valves, uncapping tray and the big radial extractor.
Each frame is then uncapped using a serrated knife in an uncapping tray. The tray has a filtration system to capture the wax cappings with honey dropping into the bottom of a tray. This honey is later transferred to a settling tank.
Four uncapped trays are then placed into a radial extractor which is turned by hand. They are spun for a few minutes and the centrifugal force empties them of honey into the side of the extractor. The frames are then turned round and spun again. The process is repeated for further frames until we have enough honey in the extractor to open the valve at the bottom. The honey drips through 2 sieves (coarse and fine) and into a settling tank. The sieves collect larger pieces of pollen and wax.
It is hot and sticky work which takes about 3 hours for 3 national honey super boxes. Then we start clearing up and this seems to take an age. The honey is left for 24 hours to allow air bubbles to float to the top of the settling tank. At this point we can jar up and label after opening the valve at the bottom of the settling tank. All jars and lids have to be washed first, rinsed and then sterilised in an oven.
Now we sit down and I normally have a can of guinness...
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