I've been waiting for this day for a long time. Today, the whole family worked together and harvested the twenty supers that I pulled off of the hives a few days ago. I did have some honey that tested more than 20% moisture content. So, for the past few days the frames have been sitting in a make-shift tent made of painters drop plastic and a dehumidifier. After a few days the 20% moisture had dropped to around 15%. Oddly, most of my capped honey tested at 18%. My understanding that 18% is on the higher end of honey, but nevertheless, it's honey. After totally disassembling, washing, and then reassembling the borrowed extractor, we definitely put it to good use. Wow, the electric motor is amazing and really made short work of spinning the honey out of the frames. Everyone pitched in and had a specific task to do. My wife uncapped, the two boys monitored the honey flow gate, and the little one kept the quality control up by taste testing. We had a great time spending time together and working on such a unique project. The boys were totally enthralled with the amount of honey that came out of the frames.
Speaking of amounts, the total take for 2008 was nearly 3 gallons for a grand total of 36 lbs.
The Queen Bee
Teaching the fine art of uncapping
Quality Control Team
My favorite frame for 2008
And a video
For the extraction process, I simply used a stainless strainer for larger filtering and a 'paint filter' for finer filtering. Other than that, it's pure, raw honey. Next step...bottling.
2 comments:
Great photos and a great blog. We've also been using a blog for our beekeeping records since we started, it's a great way to keep records and share the news. Keep it up.
Looks like a great quality control team. Can I join?
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