How to Harvest Honey

Did you know that a spoonful of local honey everyday can help keep your allergies at bay? Well harvesting honey is fun – and really sticky!  It’s no big surprise that bees love honey – so wherever you decide to do your honey harvest, it should be somewhere that bees can’t go. There are cheaper, messier and harder ways to collect honey, so I do it this way….

STEP 1:

Collect your frames of capped honey from your bees and bring it to where you are going to work.

 

STEP 2:

Using a hot capping knife you carefully shave the wax caps off the cells of honey.  At this point you will end up with a dripping frame of sticky honey and pile of wax with honey oozing out.  Be prepared for all of this or you will have an enormous mess!  Capping should be done over a container to capture the wax and honey.

For a more inexpensive method: Scrape the caps off with a capping fork.  Using this technique you will need to filter wax debris from your honey.  Not a big deal and you may filter your honey no matter how you collect it.

 

STEP 3:

Your life will be made easier with a honey extractor – a big pail with a rack on the inside that will hold various numbers of honey frames.  Turn the crank and let centrifugal force do the rest.  Go too fast and the wax and honey will fly off frames, mixing wax with your honey. Go too slow and the honey won’t come out.  Do it just right and you can come help me!

STEP 4:

Once the frames are drained of the honey, the really fun and rewarding part begins—

Bottling the liquid gold gift of our important insect pollinators.

If you spun the extractor fast and didn’t filter your honey (to filter out the wax) it will bottle like this…

(But not too worry the wax will separate with time)

 

STEP 5:

Enjoy!

If you do it right  . . .  the gift of bees is pure beauty and health.