Honey Extraction Satisfaction

by Martine Gubernat
Prior to beekeeping, when I heard the word "extraction" I was reminded of going to the dentist to have my wisdom teeth removed. I also thought about the feelings associated with that visit – anxiety, pain, stress, and exhaustion. Many years later, as I contemplate those teeth extractions, I realize that honey extraction is not all that different.

Every spring, we feel a bit of anxiety as we wait and wonder if our honey bees will gift us with the golden deliciousness of honey, especially during dry weather. Would there be enough nectar for them during the spring and early summer? Would our weak hive regroup once we re-queened the colony?

Fortunately, most of our bee anxiety was for naught; they seemed quite busy throughout the season and in July we were rewarded with many frames of beautifully capped honey.

Starting the Process

Deciding against using the smelly bee-chaser products to clear out the bees from the honey supers, we used escape boards over the brood boxes so that neither we nor the bees had to deal with the stink.

Our plan was to go back into the hives a few days later after the bees escaped back into their living chambers. Everything went according to plan when we lifted the cover to remove only one of the two honey supers from each hive – that is, until one of the girls sneaked up my pant leg and stung me on the arse – that’s where the pain came in. She must have wanted to remind me to be appreciative of her hard work; I was literally swollen with appreciation. True, it was less pain than wisdom teeth extraction, but not much.

We really thought that honey extraction would be fairly easy since honey flows so smoothly, especially in the warm weather, but little did we know how sticky and stressful it would be to uncap all those frames.

When the honey reaches the proper moisture content (16%-18%), honey bees create wax cappings to seal the honey inside the comb, preserving it indefinitely; removing those cappings — on both sides of the frames — is imperative to getting it out of the comb.

Extraction

Spinning the honey out of the frames of comb via a radial extractor employs centrifugal force to draw the honey out of the uncapped comb and into the extracting tank, where it is then emptied (through a honey gate) into a food-grade bucket with a mesh screen over the top opening so that any bits of wax, hive debris, or bee parts can be strained. Much like my wisdom teeth, which were impacted and had to be cracked into pieces to be removed, we ended up with a pile of wax cappings in the uncapping tank after having sliced, pierced, and forked them off the comb.

Moving quickly to uncap the comb and get the frames into the extractor before the honey dripped all over us and the floor was indeed stressful, especially for relative newbies who are not adept at using the tools of the trade.

Once the frames of honey were uncapped, we put six at a time into the extractor, closed the lid, and crossed our fingers. Our mentor, Pat W., had mounted our new, shared, 6-frame radial honey extractor on a very heavy base in order to keep it stable; however, the hand-cranking that we had to do in order to spin the frames – exhausting in and of itself – made the tank jiggle around too much, so the person who wasn’t turning the crank (as fast as humanly possible to spin the honey out of the comb) had to wrap the tank in a bear hug, using his or her significant body weight to keep it steady.

We took turns cranking and bear-hugging, and were worn out after two hours. The extensive, sticky clean up afterward just about did us in. Right after that exhausting session, we ordered an electric motor to turn the crank for future extractions.

Unlike being at the dentist, where the sedation was administered prior to the extraction, we chose to have ours afterward, in the form of cinnamon Snickerdoodle cookies dipped in Adagio's whipped chocolate, in order to celebrate. That certainly put it all into perspective; we’ll take honey extraction over tooth extraction anytime!