I took pictures while Jeff, Micha and Hailey smoked, pulled and brushed frames. Smoking the bees helps to calm them and encourage them to move down into the hive away from the honey box we will be taking off.
The honey gathering was a great success. There
were six of us there. Jeff and I, John and Nikki (they let Jeff keep his bees
on their 10 acre property), and Micha and Hailey (Micha works with Jeff and
Hailey is his daughter).
I took pictures while Jeff, Micha and Hailey smoked, pulled and
brushed frames. Smoking the bees helps to calm them and encourage them to move
down into the hive away from the honey box we will be taking off.
Pulling and brushing means taking the honey frames
out of the hive box and gently brushing the bees off the honey frames. The brushed
frames are then put onto an empty frame box, ready to transport to the garage
for spinning.
Once all the honey frames are in the garage,
we have to uncap and/or scrap them and then spin the honey out in a big centrifuge.
Uncapping is done with a "hot knife". It is electrical and get really
hot. Melts and slices through the wax like a hot knife through butter(? LOL).
The scrapper is used for any of the capping's that are too low in the frame
to slice off. Any honey cells that aren't uncapped will not spin out.
Our centrifuge holds four frames at once and
we try to get evenly heavy frames to balance. Otherwise the can tends to dance
across the floor. Most of the time one of us has to put weight on one side while
another is doing the spinning.
.
The final thing to do is to drain the centrifuge into containers. We use mayonnaise jars, gallon jars and 4 gallon buckets initially and then pour the honey into smaller containers for using, selling, and giving away.