Extracting Honey

Last Friday, David decided it was time we extracted honey. He was planning to take some hives up to Ryan's place for the winter and wanted work with the bees and get a little honey first. Matt and Julie came over to help.


Julie and David are uncapping (scraping the wax off the top):

Next, the frames are put in the extractor, which is cranked to make the honey come out by centrifugal force. Oscar came to help too, and everyone took a turn cranking: Then, the honey is put through three filters to take out the wax and impurities. You might think there is a lot of waste, but after I was all through straining and bottling there was only about a quart of wax with "yukkies." We could actually reuse the beeswax, but we haven't got the equipment to filter it properly. I ended up with about 70 pounds of honey from 15 frames: