 Honeycomb Honey extracting starts with honeycomb. Bees make wax cells in which they store their honey, and these wax cells collectively are called honeycomb. Famously, these cells are all perfect hexagons, as you can see in the bottom of the image to the right. So aesthetically pleasing! {swoon} When the wax cells are full of honey, and the bees have decided the honey is ready, they cap the wax cell with some additional wax to keep the honey fresh and clean for storage. You can see in the image to the right that the wax cells in the top of the photo have been capped with wax. Honey frames Many beekeepers, myself included, induce their bees to make honeycomb on wooden rectangular frames. Frames are a wonderful thing because using them keeps the hive organized, which makes it possible for the beekeeper to easily inspect her honeybees and make sure they are healthy. Medium-sized frames, the size that many beekeepers use for honey production, cost about $1.20 each (not including shipping costs) and take slow-pokes like me about 5 minutes each to assemble. You can see the edges of the rectangular frame in the image above. Extracting honey When it is time to remove honey from the beehive, the beekeeper simply removes the frames full of honey and cuts off the wax cappings. ----Wait, no, bahahahahaha, back up, back up! I'm laughing at my use of the word "simply" because it is not always very simple to remove honey frames from beehives. As you might expect, there are always bees on the honey frames, sometimes many thousands of bees, and they aren't always in the mood to be removed from the frames when the beekeeper wishes to remove the frames for extraction. It can take quite some time (and sometimes a few stings) to remove the frames from the beehives and bring them to a secure location where the honey can be removed. Depending on the time of year, the bees can be totally relaxed about the beekeeper removing honey, or on a flame-throwing rampage about it. Below is an image of my beeyard showing a mature hive with 4 honey supers on top (i.e., 4 boxes containing 9 honey frames each). The little hive to the right is nothing to worry about; it's just a brand new hive that needs some time to grow.  |
After "simply" removing the frames from the hives and taking off the wax cappings, my family and I put the frames into our extractor. The extractor is like a very large, stainless steel centrifuge. My extractor holds 6 medium-sized frames at one time.
| We put the frames inside of the extractor and it spins around very fast, flinging the honey out of the frames and onto the sides of the extractor. Then the honey slowly flows down the sides and out the spout at the bottom, where we collect it.  Because there are always some wax cappings mixed in with the honey, I allow the honey to flow through a metal strainer (see image above). The strainer catches the wax, leaving the honey to flow into a collection bucket. After letting the honey sit in the bucket for 24-48 hours, I bottle it up into glass jars, where it stays until someone eats it. After extracting, I'm not done yet. Yes, was up early in the morning to remove the honey frames from the hives. Then my family helped me to extract the honey from the frames for 6-10 hours. We are all tired and sweaty and in need of cold beverages and a swim. But before I'm done, I must return the frames to the beehive (or sometimes, the beeyard), where the busy bees clean up any remaining honey, polish the wax cells out, and start filling them back up again with fresh nectar. Drawn comb These frames that I return to the bees are jam-packed with empty wax cells, ready to receive new nectar; they are known as frames of "drawn comb." Drawn comb is very valuable to beekeepers because it jump starts the ability of the bees to make honey. This makes sense, because drawn comb saves the bees a step in the honey-making and storing process. Here is the honey-making and storage process*:
So drawn comb allows the bees to skip step 1 (making honeycomb) and head straight to step 2 (filling the comb with nectar). The bees seem to absolutely love the efficiency of drawn comb, and they go to town producing many, many frames of surplus honey multiple times per summer. If I instead fail to return the drawn comb to the bees, they have to start over all the way back on step 1, drawing out new wax cells before they can store new nectar (step 2). Because wax production is time-consuming, it holds up honey production for the hive. The reason I just used a whole paragraph to rhapsodize about drawn comb is because it relates to my next honey blog post, which will be all about cut comb honey! Until then, here's an image of some freshly extracted honey--yum! (And let's not ignore the beautiful Calendula inflorescences in the background!)  |
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