We had taken one full super off of the hive back in July and remembering that our friends from the peninsula had asked if they could come see how we extract the honey some time, we called them up to set up a date.
We came up with a weekend in early August, and reserved the extractor and related equipment from the bee club. Since our friends were coming up on Sunday morning, we took the opportunity of having some of Saturday free to check the bees again. Good thing we did as we had another full super. We swapped it for an empty and took it home with us. We also went to buy some cheesecloth and paint straining bag.
Therefore, when our friends did arrive we had two full supers of honey. We all took turns uncapping the frames with the electric heated knife into the capping tank.
We lined the rack in the tank with some cheesecloth which resulted in less lost wax, less need to strain the honey from that tank, and easier cleanup since the wax was all in the cheesecloth.
We loaded the extractor three times. Having only nine frames in the honey supers not only reduces the labor of uncapping dramatically, but it also make everything divide into the 6 frame extractor evenly.
At one point, the extractor really bogged down and it took me a couple seconds to realize that the level of the honey in the drum was up to the bottom of the frames and thus dragging the frames considerably. We opened the gate valve on the extractor and let the honey start draining into our 5 gallon drum lined with the paint bag. (Note: next time line the paint bag with a layer or two of cheese cloth.) After that things sped up again.
All told we got over 4 1/2 gallons of honey (including what drained from the cappings) and almost half a kg of beeswax from the cappings.
Our friends seemed to be really amazed at the contents of the two supers. I admit, I was too. We actually got a second smaller container and drained some of the honey from the drum into it because we were afraid we'd over flow. We would not have after all, but it still made it easier to move the honey tank with out straining so much or fear of spilling.
When the jars we later ordered arrived (144 110ml hexagonal jars, and several 1lb. 12 sided jars) I decided it would make sense to run the honey through a chinoise to filter it a bit better. There were some visible bits of wax and bee pieces that had made it through the paint strainer.
We later took a partially filled super from them since I wanted to encourage them to start building up their own supplies. Sinc that only had five frames that were about 80% full, we just scraped the comb from them rather than extracting and let it all drain through a cheesecloth lined colander (A BIG ONE). That yielded another gallon even. So to date we have almost 8 gallons or somewhat more than 80lbs of honey. Family and friends have received some of it and we are working diligently on getting the rest labled.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
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