Monday, September 30, 2013

Extracting Weekend


     We spent this weekend removing honey supers from beehives and extracting. We currently have 16 hives, most of which were started this year from packages.

 
      A 3-lb package of bees we started with this spring.
    
 
A beautiful frame of honey.
 
 
My grandpa teaching David how to de-cap frames.
 
 
De-capping reveals the honey underneath ready to be spun.
 
 
 
The frame is loaded into the extractor, which is the size of a large trash can that holds 4 frames at a time. Then you turn the crank and the honey spins out and hits the wall of the extractor, then slowly runs down to the bottom and out a valve into a waiting strainer and bucket.
 
From there the honey is run through 3 more filters to remove any impurities, then poured into 5 gallon buckets with valves for bottling.
 
 
In the end we have bottles of fresh, raw honey for sale.


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